Nut tassies are a local favorite around here in eastern Pennsylvania. They look like a tiny pecan pie, the size of one gigantic 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 all-purpose white flour. Perhaps it is that I was able to just snag them off a cookie plate at someone’s holiday party.  Now, that sort of noshing is no long a possibility, and I was craving a nut tassie. Several years ago, I started looking for a recipe and eventually I found them on food.com; 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!

Notes: Sometimes my family has a small pre-Christmas gathering and I whip up a batch of these tassies.   After chilling the dough some I make a dozen.  I will make the rest of them another day…reason being that gf cookies don’t keep as well as regular flour cookies so best not to bake the 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 often don’t chop my nuts really fine; leave some in chunks to give a bigger texture which I prefer. The filing is so simple; chop the nuts, then dump these 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 formed.

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

Nut Tassies

Crust Ingredients

3 ounces cream cheese softened

¹⁄₂ cup butter, room temp.

1cup gluten-free flour – King Arthur Basic GF Flour or Bob’s Red Mill GF All-purpose flour

¹⁄₂ teaspoon xanthan gum

2 tablespoons sugar

Crust directions: using a whisk combine the GF flour, Xanthan Gum and 2 Tbsp. spoon sugar in a small bowl, Mix and set aside.  Using a mixer combine the cream cheese, butter and sugar until cream.  Then slowly add the GF flour mix you set aside, continue to mix until well blended. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Pecan Filling

• 1 cup finely chopped pecans
• ³⁄₄ cup coconut palm sugar or brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon softened butter
• 1 lg. egg 

Directions – Using a mixer combine the pecans, brown sugar, vanilla, butter and egg until well blended

Assembly

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
• Separate the chilled pie crust into 24 equal amounts (spoon or roll into balls).
• Press the separated crust into a mini muffin pan, making sure that you press it most or all the way up
• Fill each crust with a heaping mound of the filling.
• Bake for approximately 30 min or until the crust is lightly browned.
• Let cool and remove your mini pies from the pan. Use a butter knife to remove without damaging them

Enjoy!

•