Pecan Tassies

These little darlings are great to add to your holiday cookie plate.  The crust is light and flaky and there is just enough filling to fix your sweet tooth without going overboard.  They are freezable so you can make them ahead and not be in a time crunch closer to the holidays.  

Warning though, if you think that freezing them will keep you out of them, I can tell you from experience that they are pretty tasty, and edible right out of the freezer.  I didn't even break a tooth trying to eat one. 

Pecan Tassies          makes 24                       Printable Recipe (with doubled ingredients)

Pastry:

4 ounces light cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup (1 sticks) butter, softened

1 cups all purpose flour

Filling:

1 egg

1 cup chopped pecans

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 Tablespoon butter, softened

3/4 cup brown sugar

Mix together cream cheese and butter.

Add flour and mix, it won't ball up but you can tell when the flour is incorporated.

Dump onto piece of plastic wrap, as you gather the plastic wrap up you can smoosh the dough together so it sticks to itself.  Flatten into a rectangle. Place in refrigerator for at least one hour.

Turn oven to 325 degrees.  Take a piece of dough out of the fridge, cut into 24 equal pieces.

Place each piece in ungreased mini muffin tins.  Use a tamper...

or your thumb to press dough into bottom and up the sides.  The dough should stick out just a little past the top of the muffin pan.

Mix together filling ingredients.  

Fill each tassie with filling. I used my small cookie scoop which is not quite 1 tablespoon.  Do not overfill or they will cook out the top and stick to your pan.

Bake for 25 minutes or until dough is light brown.  Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, remove from pan to allow to cool the rest of the way. 

These can be baked ahead and frozen until ready to gift or serve.  Thaw to room temperature.