This is a bit of an odd recipe. At first glance I thought it would be the easiest out of my three contributions to the cookie exchange this year. It turned out to be the biggest disaster, in fact, but I was able to save it.
I tried to double the recipe as you don’t exactly get enough of cookies out of one pie crust, and maybe that’s where things went wrong.
Still, I decided to blog about it for two reasons: One; using ready pie crust as the base for a cookie is a game-changer; two; because I was able to dial it back when it went so spectacularly wrong.
You can find the recipe here but be sure to read my notes below before you embark on this one…
Substitutions: I used Tenderflake frozen pie crust instead of making my own pie crust. The trick is to take it out of the aluminum tray and let it flatten a bit, and then you can slightly roll it if needed and cut out the circles. Here’s where it went wrong for me. When I doubled the recipe, I also doubled the eggs, so I used four. And even though I was mixing very slowly on a low heat until it thickened, the pecan pie topping basically turned into scrambled eggs. Disgusting. Once that happens there’s no saving it. So I tossed it. Then I eyeballed the ingredients I had used, save for the eggs, and threw them all back into another pan. I turned my attention to the kids or a few minutes, and completely forgot about the pecan pie topping until it began simmering and I realized it had thickened. No matter, I kept going with the instructions as laid out in the recipe, and, voila. Pecan pie cookies. They looked fantastic, and elicited the most compliments. So, there you go.
For some reason I bought pecan halves instead of chopped pecans and that made life harder, because I had to quickly bash them with something hard just as when the moment came to use them (don’t be like me, and always read ahead!). Because these cookies are so flat and small, chopped pecans would have been a better match.
Would I make these again? Yes, because there was something about them that people loved. I haven’t quite figured it out, is it just the mass appeal of the pecan tart? Is it because they are a novelty item? I, for one, have never seen these anywhere before…
Grade: Four stars out of five. The memory of the scrambled eggs still grosses me out, but you’ve been warned so you don’t have to face the same sight.
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