*pecan tassies*

a pecan tassie, my lassie! across the street from my apartment, at the corner store (which, in truth, is not on a corner at all), all sorts of delicious looking little cakes and pies are for sale by the checkout counter: apple pie, red velvet cake, sweet potato pie, lemon buttercream layer cake and pecan pie. little, tiny *pecan* pies. wrapped in cellophane, proudly displaying on their nutrition labels the partially hydrogenated fats and high fructose syrups they're made of. tempting, always. but i've never caved in to the mini pie allure. sadly, i cannot say the same about the Reeses Peanut Butter Cups or RainBlo gum that both sit beside the pies.

needless to say, when a friend recently told me that his favorite sweet treat was pecan pie, i happily pursued a recipe for the pie's younger sister, the tassie, which used only natural ingredients. this keeper was adapted from from carole walter's great cookies cookbook.

ingredients
for the pastry:
1 cup, 2 sticks, of unsalted butter at room temperature
8 oz. cream cheese at room temperature
2 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour, spooned in and leveled, divided
1/4 t salt
1/4 cup strained confectioners' sugar, spooned and leveled
for the filling: 2 large eggs
2 cups lightly packed light brown sugar
1 T molasses
2 T butter, melted and cooled
1/4 t salt
2 t vanilla extract
2 cups chopped lightly toasted pecans, divided
 
directions:  
1. in a large bowl, using a wooden spoon, mix together the butter and cream cheese til smooth.
2. mix in one cup of the flour and the salt, working until almost incorporated. cut in another half a cup of flour with the spoon, again working until the flour is almost incorporated. finish it up by kneading in another half cup of flour. be careful not to overwork the dough!
3. with lightly floured hands, shape the dough into a mound and divide it into two discs. wrap them up in parchment paper and chill at least four hours in the frige (or two in the freezer).
4. remove the dough from the freezer and let sit at room temperature ten minutes.
5. on a lightly floured surface, roll each disc out into a rectangle 1/4" thick.
6. divide each rectangle of pastry into 24 one-inch squares. roll each square into a ball and place into mini muffin tins. mold the dough into each tin, pressing it up the sides. chill while preparing the filling.
7. preheat the oven to 325F.
8. place the eggs, brown sugar, molasses, butter, salt and vanilla into a large bowl. whisk together until smooth.
9. sprinkle one cup of the pecans into the bottoms of the muffin tins.
10. fill each tin about 2/3 full with filling.
11. sprinkle the remaining cup of pecans over the filling.
12. bake for 20-25 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown around the edges. remove pastries from the oven and let stand for five minutes before removing them from the tins and allowing to fully cool on a wire cooling rack.

serve with cold milk on a sultry Oakland summer evening.