COLUMN: A Christmas gift that stuns and satisfies
It’s hard to believe, but the end of the semester is practically here, which means Christmas is here. This is exciting but can also be stressful for college students.
For one thing, we can’t even start thinking about Christmas until we get these finals out of the way, right? And then there’s the whole college student budget thing, which can put a damper on Christmas shopping sprees.
When I was thinking about this situation, two words came into my head: food gifts. Everyone loves homemade treats, and they’re definitely more budget friendly than traditional store-bought gifts.
And you don’t even have to face the cold and the crowds at the mall. You can turn on your favorite Christmas CD and your oven and make something delicious to tell someone you love them — handmade, creative and heartfelt. Done.
One unique treat that’s easy to make, but seems hard and impressive, is tassies. Tassies are miniature pie cookies. They look exactly like little pecan — or whatever flavor you choose — pies, but they are so much easier to make.
This recipe is for pecan, but you can make chocolate tassies, pumpkin tassies, raspberry tassies and probably any other kind of tassies you can dream up. They are lovely and delicious — a perfect Christmas gift.
For the Crust:
1/2 cup pecans
1/2 cup (4 ounces) cream cheese at room temperature
1/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup flour
dash of salt
For the Filling:
1 egg
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup pecans
To make the crust:
Spread the pecans out in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake in an oven preheated to 400 F for about 10 minutes, or until they are lightly browned and smell toasted.
Remove from the oven and allow them to cool completely.
Meanwhile, in the bowl of a stand mixer (or in a mixing bowl, using a hand mixer) beat the cream cheese and butter until well incorporated, about five minutes.
This will be pretty difficult if your butter and cream cheese aren’t soft. If you don’t have time to bring them to room temperature on their own, you can speed up the process by softening them in the microwave. Just be careful not to melt them.
Once the pecans are completely cool, put them in a food processor or blender and pulse until well ground. Keep an eye on them as you’re pulsing; you want them to turn into a crumbly powder. If you over-grind them or grind them when they’re still warm they can turn into pecan butter.
Add the ground pecans, flour and salt to the cream cheese butter mixture and beat until combined.
Scoop the dough into 18 tablespoon-sized balls and place them in the cups of a mini-muffin pan.
Use your fingers to gently press the dough into the bottom of each cup and up the sides to form a little crust.
Set aside while you make the filling.
To make the filling:
Toast the pecans using the same method used for the crust — you can toast all the pecans at once and measure them for the crust and filling after they’ve cooled.
Once the pecans are cool, coarsely chop them and set them aside.
Meanwhile, whisk together the egg, brown sugar, maple syrup, vanilla, butter and salt.
Stir in the pecans.
Scoop about one teaspoon of filling into each of the formed crusts.
Bake the tassies at 350 F for 15 minutes, or until the edges of the crusts are golden brown.
Let cool in the pan for about five minutes before removing to a cooling rack to cool completely.
Wrap up a few tassies with a lovely ribbon and have fun giving them away to friends and family. Happy holidays!
– Jennelle Clark is a senior psychology major who writes the online food blog foodislikeart.blogspot.com. She loves making, eating and sharing her food. Send comments to jenn.wilson@aggiemail.usu.edu.