Pecan Pie Cookies

It happened—I knew it would at some point—I missed a week! My goal has been to post twice a week while being okay with the once a week posts that typically happen. Last week came and went with no post, and I feel so guilty…probably to no one but myself…but guilty nonetheless! In my defense, I was home with the kids for a week, so we tried to jam the days with fun activities and games. We made an outdoor waterbed, PVC bows and arrows, and sidewalk chalk paint. At the end of the week, we were even able to make a trip out of town!

My family has a cabin down in southern Colorado, and we try to make it down at least once a year. We so love going down there and being totally disconnected from the “real” world (another reason I haven’t posted—excuses, excuses). While we’re there, we have no TV, no phone, and no internet. I love that we have to create our own fun, and it’s fun with no interruptions—we go hiking, read books, play darts, practice “fishing” (it’s not really fishing when you’ve got five kids, two working poles, and no bait :-)), and play a ton of board games. The best part is that we always come back feeling recharged and reenergized as a family unit. Sometimes we just need a bit of that!

One of the other super fun things about going out of town is that it means there’s one more excuse for yummy treats (because clearly…I look for excuses for yummy treats). The hubs loves pecan pie, but the poor guy only gets it twice a year—Thanksgiving and Christmas. What a fun surprise I thought that it would be for him to get a taste of pecan pie in the summer—but in a cookie format. Yep. That’s our kind of fun.

For the “pie” crust of the cookie, I opted for a sugar cookie molded into a mini-pie shape and then filled them with gooey yumminess! I’ve seen the posts on Pinterest where someone much more clever than me put cookie dough on the outside of the muffin tins to make little cookie cups for ice cream, and I’ve wanted to try it for ages. Instead of using a cookie cutter (because who can find one when they need it?) I placed different cups on the outside of the muffin tins to find the cup that would give me the right size for my tin—just fitting over the tin. It took a bit of trial and error getting the height of the sides of the cookies right, but I figured, who really cares if a cookie is high on one side and low on another if it tastes good all around? We certainly don’t!

The filling for the cookies is super easy to make, takes just a few minutes, and settles into the cookie cups beautifully. The stage of the filling that was the most work was chopping the pecans (I recommend buying chopped pecans…that’s what happens when you send the hubsters to the store with an order for pecans), but after that, it’s smooth sailing. I, of course, had to taste-test a few right away…and a little later for quality control. Let me just say that the quality stayed the same from beginning to end to the next day.

• Servings: 36
• Print

For the cookie cups:

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 ¾ cups sugar
¼ cup light brown sugar
2 TBSP water
1 cup Earth Balance butter

For the filling:

6 TBSP Earth Balance butter
1 cup light brown sugar
2/3 cup corn syrup
3 cups chopped pecans
½ tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350. Flip your muffin tins upside down and place your muffin tin liners on the outside of the muffin tins.
2. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
3. Blend the sugars and butter in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and blend until pale and fluffy. Mix in water. Reduce speed to low and gradually add the flour mixture.
4. With your hands, divide the dough into two mounds. Lightly flour your countertop or other flat surface and roll dough out to ¼ inch thick. Dip the rim of your cup or cookie cutter into a bit of water, and cut out cookie circles. Center cookie rounds on top of the outside of muffin tins, and using your fingers, gently fold the dough over the edges and up the sides as needed. Bake for 12 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the muffin tins.
5. While the cookie cups are cooling, prepare your filling. Place the butter, light brown sugar, corn syrup, salt, cinnamon, and vanilla extract in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Turn on medium heat and boil for 2 minutes.
6. Remove from heat, stir in pecans and vanilla.
7. Place 2 heaping tablespoons of pecan filling into each deep dish cookie.
Allow filling to cool and set up before serving.

These babies didn’t last long, so grab a tall glass of milk, sit back, and enjoy!

Have you made cookie cups before? I may be hooked and looking for inspiration 😉 So, what did you fill yours with?

**If you have left over cookie cups, freeze them for later, fill them with ice cream, but just don’t throw them away! I froze mine for a treat later on! 😉