Nut tassies are a local favorite around here in eastern Pennsylvania. They look like a tiny pecan pie, the size of one big bite! Heavenly sweet and best made with pecans.  I have eaten them at many people’s homes. In all fairness I never made them when I could still eat regular gluten filled white flour. Perhaps it is that I was able to just snag them off a cookie plate at someone’s holiday party.  Now, that is no long a possibility and I was craving a nut tassie. I started looking for a recipe and had some trouble with that; found a cherry one that was gf and thought I would combine it with the filing in my cookie book’s recipe.  Then I lost that location and had to search again.  Inept me….but then on food.com, there it was; a classic tassie recipe complete with cream cheese dough for the pie crust and a filling almost identical to the traditional filling. And it was gluten free for folks like me…eureka!

This weekend my family is having a small pre-Christmas gathering and I whipped up a batch of these tassies early Saturday morning.  After chilling the dough some I made a dozen.  My crust was very crumbly and with trepidation I started rolling a ball of the crumbs into one ball a bit over an inch in diameter. It held together in a ball. Then I dropped it in my mini muffin tin and used my finger to spread it out and up the sides.  It worked but I fear I used a bit more than specified for the dozen shells so I may not get my full two dozen tassies.  I will make the rest of them next weekend…reason being that gf cookies don’t keep as well as regular flour cookies so best not to bake a whole batch at once shot.  This way you have fresh cookies twice.  I keep the dough and filling in the fridge nice and cold and it will last up to a week or so.

Speaking of filling, I didn’t chop my nuts really fine; left some in chunks to give a bigger texture which I prefer. The filing is so simple; chop the nuts, then dump the sugar and eggs in a mixing bowl, add the softened butter and the vanilla and nuts; stir and it is ready to spoon into the little crust cups you just created.

Here is the link to the recipe I used: http://www.food.com/recipe/gluten-free-pecan-tassies-105371

They are easy to make and totally yummy to devour.  I find it takes me 2-3 bites to down one of these treat.  Happy baking folks!

Reposted from December 2016.