CLASSIC PECAN TASSIE

Almost everyone has their own favorite version of a pecan tassie, the classic Christmas treat. However, for those who don't, this is a great one. Pecan tassies are a bite size pecan pie in a cream cheese pastry crust. I used to make them only at Christmas, but they have become one of Hubby's favorites, so I make them throughout the year. This recipe makes 4 dozen and freezes well.

PASTRY CRUST
1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
6 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
2 cups all purpose flour

Cream the butter and cream cheese (with electric mixer) until it is light and fluffy. Add the flour and beat until the dough comes cleanly away from the inside walls of your mixing bowl. Flatten dough into a disk, wrap in plastic and chill for one hour (I NEVER chill this dough, it is a dream to work with).

FILLING
3 large eggs
3 tablespoons melted unsalted butter
1¾ cups light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

Beat the eggs until very well mixed and lemon colored. Stir in everything else.

ASSEMBLY
Roll pastry into 1 inch balls and place them into an ungreased mini-muffin pan. Using your fingers, press the balls of dough into the bottom of each cup and up the sides. (I use the floured end of my rolling pin to press the dough into place). Put a few chopped pecans in the bottom of each pastry shell and top with about a tablespoon of filling. (see note)

 Bake in pre-heated 375F oven for 15-20 minutes or until the pastry is golden and the filling is set, yet still a little soft in the center. Remove from oven and sit the pan on a wire rack for about 10 minutes before you try to lift them out. Lift tassies out of pan and cool on a wire rack.

NOTE: Keep in mind that the filling puffs as it bakes, so don't overfill the unbaked shells. If you overfill them, they will be hard to get out of the pans. For those stubborn tassies, use the tip of a knife to help you lift them out of the pan.

 

CHEDDAR & BACON HASH BROWN SIDE DISH

I needed an easy side dish to go along with some fried chicken yesterday and decided to throw together some "cheater" Au gratin potatoes. I had a bag of fresh hash browns (called Simply Potatoes) so I decided to use those (they are sold, in our market, next to the eggs). I made a quick white sauce, stirred in the hash browns, some cheddar, a little sour cream and some bacon. What more can you ask for?? They were very cream & cheesy-delicious.

1 package Simply Potatoes
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
2¼ cups milk
¼ cup chopped onions sauteed
2 cups cheddar cheese shredded
¼ cup sour cream
4 slices bacon fried crisp and crumbled

This is what the potatoes look like:

In a small, heavy bottomed sauce pan, melt 3 tablespoons butter and add 3 tablespoons flour and simmer for about a minute; stir in the sauteed onions and crumbled bacon. Whisk in the milk (whisk quickly, at first, so you don't get lumps) and cook until the mixture thickens. When it comes to a boil, remove from heat and stir in the cheese, potatoes and sour cream. Pour into a greased 2 quart baking dish and bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes or until bubbly and potatoes are tender.

I don't see why you couldn't use frozen hash browns (as long as you thaw them first).

SWEET POTATO PECAN PIE TARTS

I'm posting this at midnight and it is FIFTEEN BELOW ZERO HERE!!
This last weekend was our 39th wedding anniversary; we were high school sweethearts. To celebrate, I made a big roast beef dinner and these heavenly little tarts that I found on Shelby's The Life and Loves of Grumpy's Honybunch. They are absolutely delicious tiny bites (about the size of a tassie) of cinnamon spiced sweet potato and pecans all baked in a pre-prepared mini-phyllo cup. They are impressive looking, great tasting, ultra-easy and (believe it or not) the recipe says they are only about 45 calories each!! It doesn't get much better than that!!!

1 cup cooked and mashed sweet potato
3 tablespoons white sugar
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup chopped toasted pecans
¼ cup brown sugar, packed
1 tablespoon dark corn syrup (I used light)
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg white

2 (2.1 ounce) packages mini-phyllo shells

Poke sweet potatoes a few times with a knife and place them in a pie plate with 2 tablespoons of water; cover loosely with waxed paper and microwave on high for five minutes (mine took 7 minutes) or until tender.

Mash and measure out 1 cup of sweet potato. Add sugar, cinnamon and salt and stir well (I used my electric mixer to really mash the potatoes). Set aside.

In a small bowl, combine toasted pecans, brown sugar, syrup, vanilla and egg white. Stir well and set aside.

Set mini phyllo shells on a baking sheet and put about 1 teaspoon of the sweet potato mixture into the bottom of each shell (gently push down-in a little). Spoon ½ teaspoon of pecan mixture over the sweet potato mixture. Bake at 350F for 20 minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack.

NOTE: Our super-store sells these little pre-made phyllo shells in the ATHENS brand.

CHOCOLATE-PEANUT BUTTER FILLED COOKIES

There should be a warning attached to this recipe...do not eat these while they are still warm, because you won't be able to stop!! These chocolate spritz dough cookies with a mini-Reese's center, are heavenly right out of the oven. I "accidentally" knocked a few of them over, while they were still hot, and the melted chocolate sort of got drippy like in this photo (so I was FORCED to eat those imperfect ones...snicker).

The chocolate shell is a spritz cookie recipe

1¼ cup butter (room temperature)
1 cup white sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar packed
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2½ cups all purpose flour
2/3 cup bakers cocoa
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
Frozen miniature Reese's cups

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars at medium high speed until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each egg. Add vanilla extract. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Add this gradually and beat well. Let dough sit for about 15 minutes.

Roll dough into 1½ inch balls and place in an ungreased mini-muffin pan. Bake at 375 for about 12 minutes, leave the cookies in the pan.

Immediately press a frozen miniature Reece's cup candy into the center of each baked cookie, pressing down as far as you can. Let cookies sit in pan for about 10 minutes, then carefully lift them out and place them on a cooling rack. The chocolate will be very liquid, so be careful not to spill it.

 Cookies will cool and set in an hour so. After the chocolate "sets" the cookies are no longer messy. Makes about 4 dozen.

NOTE: Christmas sprinkles or candy would make these a wonderful addition to your Christmas cookie trays.

BACON MACARONI & CHEESE

This recipe has evolved over the years, to what it is today; one of our (my) favorite side dishes. It's just your basic mac and cheese with a few small tweaks. I've tried it with almost every kind of cheese you can think of and I still like good old American cheese the best.

2 cups mini-penne pasta
4 cups chicken broth
¼ cup finely minced onions, sauteed
2 cups frozen mixed vegetables (corn, peas, carrots)
5 strips of bacon fried and crumbled
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon ground dry mustard
2 teaspoons dry parsley flakes (opt.)
2¼ cups milk
1 cup diced American cheese
bread crumbs and butter

Saute the finely minced onions until they are tender and sweet, set aside. Boil the pasta and vegetables (together) in the chicken broth until tender, then drain and stir a little butter into the pasta-veggies and set aside.

In a sauce pan, melt 3 tablespoons of butter then stir in 3 tablespoons of flour, parsley, pepper and dry mustard. Stir and cook very slowly (let it just bubble) for about a minute, then add the milk, sauteed onions and bacon (whisk like crazy when you first start to add the milk to avoid any lumps). Stir and cook this sauce until it thickens. Remove from heat and add the cheese. After it sits for a few minutes, stir and the cheese should be mostly melted. Pour over the pasta and veggies and mix well.

 Pour into a greased 9 x 13 baking dish and top with bread crumbs (see note). Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes or until bubbly.

NOTE: Place 2 cups of plain dry bread crumbs in a frying pan and add 2 tablespoons of butter. Toast over medium high heat (stirring) until bread crumbs have absorbed all of the butter and the crumbs are golden. Spread evenly over the macaroni and cheese before putting in oven.

EASY PLAY DOUGH - A GREAT WEEKEND PROJECT FOR THE KIDS or GRANDKIDS

I've tried many play dough recipes over the years and this one is, by far, the best yet. It is made with common pantry items and is ready to play with, literally, in a few minutes!! It's soft, pliable and super easy to work with. When the kids are done with it, recipe says to keep it in an airtight container in the fridge, but with all that salt, I doubt that is necessary.
EASY PLAY DOUGH
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup table salt
2 cups water
4 teaspoons cream of tartar
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
food coloring (see note)

Put everything in a large, heavy bottomed, sauce pan and cook (stirring) on medium high until this comes away from the sides of the pan and thickens to the consistency of Play Doh (it just takes a couple minutes). Make sure you have a very sturdy wooden spoon to stir this with and it takes a little elbow power at the very end.

Remove the cooked dough from the sauce pan and knead it for a minute or so until it becomes smooth. I did this kneading stage with my stand mixer which cooled the dough down almost immediately (a good thing).

If you want the play dough to be all the same color, add the food coloring with the water before cooking. I wanted to try two colors, so I divided the cooked dough in half and put half in my stand mixer (for the kneading step) and I added food color paste to the dough while the machine was kneading the dough (this step can be done by hand, but I would suggest you use rubber gloves so you don't get green fingernails).

My one concern with using the concentrated food color paste was that it would come off on my hands when I "played" with the final product...it did not!! This is a great weekend project for the kids!!

NOTE: The colors in this photo were obtained by using Wilton frosting color paste, which is very concentrated color. You can use ANY food coloring (or NO food coloring) that you like.

CREAM CHEESE WAFFLES

More often than not, we have sourdough waffles or sourdough pancakes on the weekends. However, recently I've been searching for a quick-fix waffle recipe and I have found a great one in our electric co-op newsletter, submitted by a lady named Sarah Wolcoff. Her deliciously moist and fluffy cream cheese waffles are oh so good!!!

1¾ cup all purpose flour
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
(1) 3 ounce cream cheese (room temperature)
2 eggs (separated)
1½ cups milk
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (my tweak)

Mix the cream cheese and 2 egg yolks together until smooth; stir in milk, vanillaextract and vegetable oil. Add dry ingredients and stir just until combined, it will be a little lumpy. Beat 2 egg whites until stiff peaks form and then fold them gently into the batter, leaving lots of fluffs of egg white (don't over mix). Cook in waffle iron. Recipe makes about 6 good size waffles