Pecan Puffs

For me, the Christmas holiday season always reminds me of how much work and effort my Mom put into baking goodies at least a month away from Christmas.  She made fruit cakes, plum puddings, cookies of many varieties, pies, chocolates, savory tidbits.  It seemed the house was forever enveloped in beautiful cooking aromas.  This season I seemed to be taking a page out of Mom’s book and have been baking more than usual.  I was watching Sarah’s Holiday Party decorating program on TV last week and saw she was making these cookies. I recently purchased a food processor and absolutely love how well it works.  I was vacillating between Cuisinart and KitchenAid and finally decided on the 12 cup KitchenAid.  The way the top came off was a deciding factor for me as I found the Cuisinart 11 cup lid was a bit finicky plus KitchenAid is offering a mail in rebate of $75.00 for this unit. An additional 20% off I received from The Bay also made this purchase very attractive.

Makes 48 (depending on size)
recipe from Sarah’s Holiday Party
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1 cup butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups cake flour, sifted
4 tablespoons brown sugar
2 cups pecans
icing sugar for dusting

Add pecans to food processor. Puree until well ground and fine, almost to the consistency of pecan butter.  Add butter and brown sugar to food processor and mix until mixture appears frothy. Add vanilla and mix again.  Add flour a little at a time, pulsing the food processor between additions. The resulting mixture should appear as a thick paste.  Chill in the refrigerator for 30-60 minutes until firm, then scoop out small amounts of dough and roll into balls.

Preheat oven to 150c (300f).  Place balls on a non-stick baking sheet (they can be close together as the dough does not expand much when cooking). Bake at 300 degrees for about 35 to 45 minutes, depending on the size of balls. Remove from oven when slightly golden on the outside. Transfer carefully to a cooling rack while still warm (best to use your fingers so you don’t crush the cookies with a spatula), then use a flour sifter to dust icing sugar over the top of the cookies while warm. Allow to cool completely, and dust again.

The Culinary Chase’s Note:  These literally melt in your mouth!  I didn’t follow the instruction about refrigeration, not because I thought I knew better, but because I had hastily scribbled the notes down and forgot that part where it said to refrigerate the dough and then roll into balls. I dropped the dough by heaping teaspoonfuls onto the cookie sheet.  This didn’t seem to affect the delicate nature of this cookie nor how delicious it tasted in my mouth. Thanks goodness for Google search!  If you like this, then you may also like my easy shortbread cookie recipe.