Praline and Butter Pecan Pound Cake (an experiment) (gluten free)

Ring of No Regrets

In case you hadn't figured this out, I love having the opportunity to bake birthday cakes. Twice a year, I get to design and build something more for show, because the feasting will be done, in the majority, by youthful philistines... that is, the party guests of my favorite house monkeys. ;) And so, I have created rough sculptures from flour, sugar, and butter.

This weekend is another birthday, though, for an adult in the family. No sculpture necessary. It just has to be tasty as heck and not look as though a train ran it over and it caused a derailment.

Therefore, I have the freedom to explore a variety of flavors, textures, and extra ingredients, all of which I hope will please the palates of the family. And I may have hit on one. Well, at least if the rest of the crowd isn't impressed, The Bat and I will have some extremely decadent treats.

Because…pecans and butter. What's not to love?

You know you want some of that butter and pecan bliss…

My inspiration was a recipe I found in my mailbox, but I had to adapt it to remove the wheat, and…well, once you mess with flour in a cake, there's a huge risk you're going to end up with something completely different from the original plan. I realize there are some very good gluten-free 1:1 all-purpose flours on the market (I generally use Pamela's™because it's reliable & reasonably priced), but when your recipe is in volume rather than weight, textures can vary. Also, I was interested in finding out whether a cake with nut meal in its base was everything the GF sites said it was.

It is.

Seriously, even if this had come out nothing but crumbs, I'd have spent an hour licking the last crumbs off the countertop.

Try it for yourself.

I made this one using a mix of pecans, brown sugar, and butter in the bottom of the pan. The sugar hardened, & needed help coming out of the pan (hence, the crumbly lines at what would have been the ridges), but it tasted like the Elyssian Fields...And WAY too sweet for most of the family.

Praline and Butter Pecan Pound Cake (gluten free)

Ingredients:

2 cups pecan pieces
3/4 pound unsalted butter (3 sticks) plus 2 tablespoons, divided
2 1/4 cups granulated sugar (plus more for pan)
3/4 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
6 large eggs
1 1/2 cups almond flour (almond meal)
1 1/2 cups gluten-free 1:1 all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/2 teaspoon gluten-free baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 Tablsepoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup pralines (or simple pecan halves) (optional)

 Directions:

Set out all refrigerated ingredients at least 1/2 hour ahead of time, so that everything you work with is at room temperature.

Finely chop 2 cups of pecans (I use a tool designed expressly for the purpose). In a large frying pan, melt 2 Tablespoons butter, add in chopped pecans. Stir until butter covers the pieces completely, continue to stir until they're lightly browned (about 5-8 minutes). Remove from heat, set aside to cool.

Preheat oven to 325º F (approx 165º C).

Completely coat the inside of your non-stick baking pan with non-stick spray, then "dust" it with a coating of granulated sugar (I used a bundt pan, but you might want to pull out your large tube pan). Arrange 1/2 cup pecan halves facing downward on the bottom of pan.

In a small mixing bowl, whisk together granulated & brown sugars until evenly combined. Set aside.

Into a medium mixing bowl, sift together almond flour, all-purpose flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

Using your stand mixer bowl with paddle (or a heavy-duty hand mixer, if you don't have a solid stand mixer) at low speed, mix together sugar and butter until just combined, add eggs and mix only until the yolks are broken.

With mixer continuing at low speed, begin adding in the dry ingredients a few tablespoons at a time until all combined.

Add in vanilla, mix in completely.

Add chopped pecans, stir by hand, if necessary.

Scoop batter into cake pan carefully, so as to avoid disturbing your layer of pecans.

Bake 75 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean.

Remove from oven, allow to cool completely.
(If the cake sticks to the pan at this point, warm it a few minutes in the oven, to soften the sugar in the crust enough for it to release from the pan.)

Serve in small slices, perhaps with unsweetened whipped cream or with ice cream.

The Perfect Meal Cookie : The Oatmeal Standard

I learned too late to do anything about it, that yesterday was National Oatmeal Cookie Day.

Only lightly speckled with dried cranberries… but plenty of pecan chunks.

Imagine the heartbreak in our house, to have missed the opportunity this year to honor such a great food! After all, it is the perfect meal, if you want it to be…egg & nut protein, fiber from the oats and the fruit, and, of course, outrageously edible…if one wanted to, one could even give it real muscle by adding bacon crumbles. Or, you can leave it alone as a tasty dessert treat. Which my family prefers. Even when we miss the holiday. As we did yesterday.

Well, rather than allow this tragedy to go  unaddressed, today I decided to simply pretend it was still yesterday. I asked The Bat for her old stand-by recipe (a battered photocopy of an Ann Pillsbury recipe published at least as long ago as the first year my folks were married, more than a half century ago), and got to work.

Along with the plan of baking a heap of treats, I also gave a test to my most recent gluten-free flour purchase. I'd already tried Bob's Red Mill 1:1 GF, and it was good, but I like to be thorough. And I'm rather glad I was.

I like the texture and taste even of the dough made using the Pamela's flour, and the cookies…most assuredly a repeatable experiment. The one issue I had was that they didn't turn out chewy, the way regular wheat-based flour does. The under-baked cookies still ended up very crumbly, not at all gooey. But then, it's a small sacrifice, considering these were awesomely tasty. I suppose I might consider adding chocolate chips, or even white chocolate chunks, but I don't think it's all that necessary.

These are truly tender and tasty all by themselves.

I could have sworn I had two full dozen, not twenty minutes ago…

Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1 teaspoon double-acting baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
2 eggs, unbeaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups quick-cooking oatmeal
1 cup chopped pecans
1 1/2 cups dried cranberries
1 cup mini chocolate chips (optional)
1 cup white chocolate chips or chunks (optional)

Directions:

Set oven racks near middle of oven. Preheat oven to 375º F. Lightly grease at least 2 baking sheets.

In a small mixing bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, soda, and salt.

In larger mixing bowl, cream butter and then add sugars gradually, mixing to cream well.

Add eggs and vanilla, beat in well.

Completely mix in sifted dry ingredients, then add oatmeal, pecans, and, finally, dried cranberries (and, if you are adding them, now is the time for the chocolate chips. I passed, this time).

Drop dough by heaping teaspoonfuls onto a lightly greased cookie sheet (I use a 2-Tablespoon dough scoop), leaving about two inches between dough balls.

Bake 12 to 15 minutes, or until golden brown.

Remove from oven. If using gluten-free flour, allow to stand on baking sheet at least one minute to set up.  If using regular all-purpose flour, remove from baking sheet with thin spatula, finish cooling individually on rack. Be careful - they are tender and break apart easily!

See the one to the left of center? It cracked, and had to be eaten immediately…a pity, really.

Makes about 5 dozen small (2-bite) cookies, or about 3 dozen larger cookies.

Christmas Cheery Cherry Rolls (Gluten-free)

Merry Christmas. Your plate of rolls is already half empty.

In my yoot (for those who are unfamiliar with "My Cousin Vinnie", go watch it and then come back to ask me about my yoot), Christmas breakfast was kind of a big deal. We didn't have one of those breakfast casseroles, either. The Bat would get up and close the doors to the living room, so we'd have to go those extra six steps the long way to the dining room, and we'd sit down to eat scrambled eggs with bacon, toasted homemade bread with butter, and, last but not least, the Swedish tea ring.

The tea ring was made with a sweetened bread dough, filled with cherries and chopped pecans, and lightly drizzled with a cinnamon/milk/powdered sugar glaze. As most of these things are, it was, in effect, as if one started making cinnamon rolls, and then changed one's mind before completely slicing off the sections, but instead just snipped partway through and curled the tube around itself. In The Bat's case, it was also slightly more than a cinnamon roll, because she added pie cherries into the mix, in a manner similar to this.  It made a pretty, cherry-and-gold sunburst of breadly goodness. She didn't even need to glaze it.

But now that I'm among the wheat-free, that simple and elegant treat seemed a dangerous option. After all, most gf breads are made using a dough which is so soft as to be mistaken for muffin batter.

Which brings me to this year.

The Bat will be making her favorite Christiana Campbell's Tavern Sweet Potato Muffins for supper, and we're going to try to adapt that recipe to GF, so I wondered to myself if I might convert the tea ring recipe to a muffin cup treat.

It appears that I am capable.

Next year, I may even be able to create an actual GF Swedish tea ring, using a pastry bag and a little creative mayhem.

But for now, I have a great way to adapt a package of Bob's Red Mill GF Homemade Bread Mix to make less sandwich-y and more Christmas-y. And kind of roll-y. Well, more than kind of, on that last one.

Oh, and I only just barely followed some of the directions on the package. Which is pretty much in keeping with the old rule of art class: never use paint straight from the tube.

For this you will need three standard 12-cup muffin pans (not the giant size or the muffin-top, and most definitely not the gem pans), 1 small microwave-safe mixing bowl, 1 small mixing bowl of any variety, 1 stand mixer and its large bowl with standard paddle (not a dough hook), a 1 1/2-inch cookie dough scoop, a rubber spatula, a cup of water and a teaspoon (of the stirring and eating sort, not the measuring kind), measuring cups and spoons. You will also need to drain your pie cherries, and, if they're frozen, they'll need thawing completely before starting this recipe. And, if you're like so many of us and you store your bread mixes in the freezer to keep the flours from going rancid, you'll want to take the mix out at least a half hour ahead of time to warm it up, too.

And then you get going and bake these treats with so much less guilt and pain!

Some come out looking a little lumpy. That's okay. They still taste great!

Christmas Cherry Rolls 

Ingredients: 

Filing: 

2 cups tart pie cherries, juices drained
1/2 cup dried tart cherries

1 1/2 cup pecans, coarsely chopped

5 Tablespoons brown sugar (or 3 Tbs brown sugar substitute)

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted

Bread:

1 12-ounce can of evaporated milk (NOT sweetened condensed!) plus enough regular milk to have 1 3/4 cups

3 Tablespoons honey

4 large eggs plus enough egg whites for 1 1/4 cups 

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1 package (for single loaf) gluten-free bread mix

Directions:

Generously butter the cups and around the rims of three non-stick 12-reservoir muffin pans and also generously butter three sheets of foil to fit over their tops. 

In small plain mixing bowl, combine both varieties of cherries, cinnamon, brown sugar, chopped pecans, and 1/4 cup melted butter. Stir well and allow to sit & steep in the juices this will make.

Meanwhile, in small microwave-safe mixing bowl, gently warm milk and honey in microwave (nuke it at half temp for about 90 seconds, check it to see if it's warmed. If not, pop it back in for another 30 seconds at a time until it's about 95º F). Remove from microwave oven, gently sprinkle contents of yeast packet onto the top of the milk mixture. Allow to stand on counter until the yeast begins to foam (about 5-7 minutes).

Pour flour part of bread mix into the bowl of a stand mixer, and, using the paddle (NOT the dough hook), begin to mix in the eggs, butter, and the milk/yeast/honey mixture.

Once the ingredients are mixed, allow mixer to work the thick batter at medium speed for three minutes, occasionally using a spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl, as needed.

Using the 1 1/2-inch scoop, fill the bottom of each muffin cup with one level scoop of the thin dough. When all the cups have rough dough balls in their bottoms, take a spoon, dip it in warm water, and create a depression in the middle of each, pressing the dough around the edges of the muffin cup at the same time.

Fill each dough reservoir with a heaping Tablespoon of the cherry mixture, and then top each with a small amount (about a teaspoon) of the remaining dough, until it is all used up. With a wet spoon or wetted fingers, spread and smooth the dough over the top of the cherries.

Cover with buttered foil and allow to rise in a warm place about 20-30 minutes, until the dough comes almost level with the top of each cup. During the rising time, preheat the oven to 375º F.

When dough is risen, place muffin tins in middle of oven and bake 10 minutes. Cover with foil (to prevent rolls from becoming too dark) and bake another 10 minutes.

Remove from oven, remove from pans, and allow to cool on rack. If you like the crust of your rolls to be tender, wrap the rolls in airtight packaging before they are completely cool. For a crustier roll, allow to cool completely, about 1 hour, before storing.

If you prepare these the night before Christmas (or other occasion for serving), reheat in oven – not microwave – by covering in foil and baking at 225º – 250º F for about 10 minutes.

MMMM it's smiling at you! This is a merry Christmas!

Butter Pecan Custard Pie (or, a Favorite Ice Cream Without the "Ice" Part)

Butter. Pecan. Custard. Pie. That is all I have to say. 

Did you ever want your favorite flavor of ice cream, but figured the season was just too cold to mess with a frozen dessert?

Me, neither.

But when I told my friends and family I wanted butter pecan ice cream, I got the old familiar looks ("Have you checked your meds, dear?"). Needless to say, I had to find a way to get away with it, and gather support for my efforts, to boot.

Enter Pop and the Friday Supper Group. This is not an organized club, or anything. It's just that our best friends come over nearly every Friday evening for a meal and decompression at the end of their very busy week. And, most Fridays, they bring a pie, as their contribution to the repast.

Well, this time, I finally got myself ready ahead of time and let them know we planned an easy meal (The Bat fixed a big pot of chili & I started a smaller pot of chicken soup, because...well, winter). This meant no reason for guilt about not bringing something to the party, which, in turn, meant I had the good excuse to provide one of my own desserts, so that I would not be shoveling pie all by my lonesome... that would undermine my year-long efforts to drop some of my excess poundage.

Long story short [too late!], I got to make a butter pecan pie, and share it with others. Merry Christmas!

It's totally gluten-free, but beyond that, it's outrageously naughty. I dug up one of the eggiest custard pie recipes I could find, and made sure it would accommodate fatty dairy products, as well (yes! real whipping cream! and butter galore!). 

The crust is nuts – literally. If you're going to make butter pecan pie, make it pecans all the way down.  

You will need a few basic pieces of equipment: a jelly roll pan (cookie sheet with sides), a small-ish microwave-safe mixing bowl, a food processor (or a blender and a bit of patience and attention), a 9- or 10-inch pie pan, a stand mixer, a small (1 quart is a good size) saucepan, measuring cups and measuring spoons. If you use a smaller pie pan, you may also need a few greased custard cups and a water bath for them… this filling is abundant!

The nice thing about this pie is, you don't need to serve it with anything else, like ice cream, or whipped cream. But, if you feel as though you can't just serve a pie all by itself, it's perfectly acceptable to top it with fresh raspberries or some other fruit. Excess is nice, once in a great while. Nevertheless, the pie, on its own, is all one really requires in order to thoroughly misbehave.

But then, I feel that way about all pie.

I am, after all, my father's daughter.

Butter Pecan Custard Pie

Crust Ingredients: 

2 heaping cups pecan halves, divided

3 Tablespoons unsalted butter, divided

1 teaspoon sweetener (optional)

Crust Directions: 

Preheat oven to 375º F

In a medium microwave-safe bowl or a medium-small saucepan, melt 2 Tablespoons butter. Stir the pecans into the butter, coating them completely. 

Spread pecans out to a single layer's depth in the jelly roll pan. Place on middle rack of oven for about 8-10 minutes, until you begin to smell the butter browning. Remove from oven, allow to cool in the pan. When it is cool to the touch, place the entire sheet into freezer, allow to chill for at least an hour.

Before removing nuts from freezer, melt the remaining tablespoon of butter. 

Place 1 2/3 cups of those toasted pecans and (optional) sweetener in food processor and chop coarsely. Continue to chop, pouring in melted butter, chopping until it has the texture of coarse meal (you're not making nut butter, just a crust).

Remove from food processor bowl and press evenly into pie pan. Refrigerate until the custard filling is ready. 

Custard Filling Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups whole milk

1 cup whipping cream

4 Tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

5 large eggs, at room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon real vanilla extract

Custard Filling Directions:

Preheat oven to 400º F.

In a small saucepan, heat milk and cream to scald (hot enough to form tiny bubbles around the edge of the pan, but not to boil). Remove from heat, put butter in to melt.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat eggs well, one at a time. Gradually add in the sugar until it is well-mixed. Pour in milk/butter mixture and mix well. Then add in the vanilla. 

Place the crust-filled pie pan in a clean jelly-roll pan or, if you have it, a pie ring (one of those metal dinguses designed to catch overflow but not block heat from reaching the bottom of the pie), on the middle rack of the oven. Pour the custard filling into the crust until it is mostly filled, then scatter the remaining 1/3 cup of buttered pecans over the top of the custard before sliding the whole thing into the oven.

If you have extra filling, pour into custard cups in a water bath (a pan in which the cups sit with hot water at least halfway up the sides), and place alongside the pie. (You may wish to add a few of the reserved pecans to the custard cups, as well, but if you opt against it, you will have a nice, simple custard alongside the pie.)

Bake at 400º F for 10 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 300º F and continue to bake for another 30 minutes. If you are also baking cups of custard, check them after 15 minutes by inserting a thin knife into the center of one. If the knife comes out clean, the custard is cooked, even though it may look jiggly. This same practice should be applied to checking the pie at the end of its 30 minutes. 

Remove from oven, cool on rack. Serve at room temperature, or refrigerate overnight and serve chilled.

The last slice. Woe is me, for what will tomorrow bring?

Feeling Like a Toff with Buttery Toffee

Christmas just isn't Christmas around our house without at least one big batch of English Toffee.  Fortunately, this is not a great challenge. It's relatively inexpensive, and takes less than an hour to put together (it takes a little longer to cool, and, really, that's the part with the greatest hardship – you see it sitting there for hours, looking all chocolatey and nutty and buttery, and you don't dare dig into it for fear you'll cover yourself in melted chocolate and be caught in the act). It's also very easy to make. All you need for equipment is a jelly roll pan (a nice 13"x18" cookie sheet with sides), a regular flat cookie sheet, a heavy-duty 6-quart saucepan, a candy thermometer, and a stirring tool, such as a wooden spoon. Cooling racks are useful, too, but I've been known to set my jelly roll pan on a folded towel, in the past, when my cooling racks were filled with cookies. The rack isn't all that special, just an aid to making the process work a little faster. And you'll need a nice, big spatula and a nice, big knife.

Also, if you're fussy, you may want a small bowl of water, and, either a pastry brush or a paper towel handy, so that you can damp-brush the crystallized stuff off the sides of the pan and back into the mix as it boils, and it won't make the candy grainy. Otherwise,  if you opt out of that, when you stir, just be sure you don't scrape the pan's sides. The bottom, lots of times, but not the sides.

Anyway. That's all the equipment you need.

Beyond the gear, though, the ingredients are also simple and few: sugar, butter, water, chocolate chips, and pecans. It's easy-peasy; if you keep a gluten-free kitchen, it's also safe for friends on that special-needs diet. However, if your friend is on a low-carb diet, he or she is SOL, as they say.

Whatever the circumstances, with a little bit of focus, you can impress the heck out of your friends who may be still intimidated by hot stoves and sharp objects. 

Shoo, sweetie. This chubby leg is not providing you a lap just now.

Since you're working with boiling sugar, I don't recommend you invite your small people into the kitchen to help with the initial work (they can help when you apply the chocolate and nuts, and beyond). If your small people are of the furry variety, though, I suggest you bribe them to stay in the other room for the entire duration (closed and locked doors may be necessary). After all, without opposable digits, they can't stir very well, and, well…nobody likes bits of whisker and floof in their candies. 

Just set yourself up for an hour without that help.

Then get going. Make a big batch.

English toffee

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar

2 cups (1 lb.) butter

6 Tablespoons water (I used bottled water because our tap water still tastes like licking a cave floor)

2 cups chocolate chips or your favorite dark chocolate, chopped

1 1/2 cups pecans, coarsely chopped (the original recipe The Bat found calls for finely chopped, but we like recognizable elements where we can include them. Or, as The Bat has said often over the years, "It's good to see and know the nuts in our house." But I digress.)

Directions:

Prepare a jelly roll pan by lightly buttering it. Set aside.

Chop your pecans. Set aside, along with the chocolate chips.

In a heavy-duty saucepan, combine sugar, butter, and water. 

Just a reminder: this is NOT a low-fat, low-carb food

Over medium-high heat, set to boil, stirring frequently. 

Double, double, not much trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble

You'll want to continue to keep an eye on this, stirring more frequently as the temperature rises above 225º F. It will begin to darken, and, if you don't stir carefully during its last stages, it will burn on the bottom of the pan. Your nose will tell you if that happens. Don't force your nose to have that responsibility. Stir. Stir. Stir. Figure eight, big circle, sweep-across, infinity, big circle, sweep across. Cover the whole bottom of the pan with your wooden spoon.

When your candy thermometer indicates the mixture has reached 300º F (just 2º shy of hard crack stage), remove from heat and pour into prepared jelly roll pan.

Let the chips fall where they may

Sprinkle your chocolate onto the hot toffee, and allow a minute or so for the chips to melt.

Covered in chocolate…is this heaven?

Using an offset spatula, or even a silicone mixing spatula, spread the chocolate across the top of the toffee, covering it all.

Sprinkle your chopped pecans over that.

With a large knife, score the candy deeply while still hot, to measure out the size of pieces you'd like to have it break into (I like them about 1 1/2 inches square. The Bat likes them slightly larger). Pretend they're candy bars – do you want them bite-sized, or jumbo, or something in between? Go for it.

Now comes the hard part: letting it cool and then giving most of it away

Allow to cool completely. You want that chocolate completely firm before you try to take the candy from the pan, because what you'll need to do is place a flat cookie sheet over the top of your candy pan and then flip the whole thing, flexing the jelly roll pan to break loose the candy. It will land upside-down on the cookie sheet, and you'll need to handle it, to put it right-side up.

If any of it sticks to the jelly roll pan, peel it away with a fine metal spatula and don't worry if it doesn't come off smoothly and squarely.

Candy, little girl?…

Random degrees of decadence

As you may have noticed, some pieces broke apart into random shapes. This is a good thing. The squared ones are for people who have problems with that random element (squares, themselves, IMHO). The bits-and-pieces ones allow us to pick and choose from tiny, small, medium, and large-ish bits, depending upon how naughty we feel at that moment. Think of them as the toffee cousin to brittle – when was the last time you saw squares of peanut brittle? Just grab a bite and live a little! 

Or, throw them in a little parchment-lined gift box, put an arty bow on it, and try not to cry as it all leaves your house.

Pecan Shortbread Cookies (Pecan Sandies), or, How To Reward a Physicist for Retrieving a Wallet from Another Dimension

Yummmm!

I lost my wallet the other day. 

Well, I misplaced it. 

I spent the better part of an hour retracing my few steps, and had no success. It didn't help that I'd just finished a lovely frat-house quality cocktail of vodka and the equivalent of Kool-Aid on an empty stomach moments before I realized my wallet was not in the pocket where it belongs. 

In other words, I was distressed and befuddled, and had no luck finding my plastic, my losing lottery tickets, and my aged ticket to my alma mater's stage production of The Trojans. I wasn't all that worried about those contents, but, dang it, I'd just bought the wallet a few months ago, after spending a year looking for the right one at the right price to suit my needs, and I was going to miss it. 

Besides, it had pics of my sister's kids, at their most adorable, in it.

So I had resigned myself to living with my losses, climbed morosely into my room, gotten into my pajamas, and turned on the tv to watch whatever show had the biggest pyrotechnic display, when Pop came to the door and asked if there might be a reward for the person who finds the wallet. 

It had been out in plain sight, in the room of rest. It was a clear case of hiding in plain sight. On the other side of a dimensional rift.

It took a nuclear physicist to find it. 

This is his payment:

Pop got 30 of these. Mom got two. Seems fair. In Pop's world.

Pecan Shortbread Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup (1/2 pound)  butter, at room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar, tightly packed
3 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups plus 3 Tablespoons all-purpose flour, divided
2 cups pecans, coarsely chopped, plus 1/2 cup finely chopped

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350º F.

In large mixer bowl, at relatively high speed, cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.  Beat in vanilla and salt. At low speed, gradually scoop in 2 cups flour until just mixed. Stir in coarsely chopped pecans.

Onto a parchment-covered cookie sheet, set  two inches (about 5 centimeters ) apart, shape dough into  1 1/2 inch (4 cm) balls and top with a sprinkling of finely-chopped pecans. Lightly butter the bottom of a flat-bottomed cup, then dip into bowl holding remaining 3 Tablespoons flour, use floured cup to lightly press cookie dough balls flat-ish.

Bake at 350º F for 15 minutes, or until golden-brown. Cool on rack.

Makes 32.

Let your father have as many as he wants.

Cranberry Rum Pecan Pie

Fresh from the oven. A few of those cranberries pushed some of those pecan halves around – the big bullies!

When it comes to desserts, I am my father's daughter. I love pie. I love pie so much that, if somebody were to tell me I had a choice between a long life married to Dolph Lundgren but never to have pie again, and a big slice of pie right before a swift death, I'd be hemming and hawing, and still probably choose the pie. And I'd give my eyeteeth even for a simple lunch date with Dolph. I think he's that cool.

But enough of guilty pleasures and schoolgirl crushes.

The problem with pie is, I can't eat wheat any more. And most people make their pie crusts from basic all-purpose wheat flour. I'm also allergic to almonds, and most people who build gluten-free recipes love to make pie crusts with almond flour. This, of course, means I can't eat just any pie. Therefore, I search high and low for crusts and compatibilities.

And, of course, I seek the best way to safely misbehave.

This means, while I get a healthy overdose of sugars, I can at least brag that there's extra nutrition in whatever I prepare. In this case, it's a bit of additional protein. Yes, it's a pecan pie, but it's a pecan-pecan pie. The crust is purely pecans and butter.

Seriously. Pecans. Butter. Crust.

As for the pie filling…well, let's get down to business.

Cranberry Rum Pecan Pie

Crust ingredients:* 

2 cups chopped pecans
4 Tablespoons melted butter


Filling ingredients:

3 large eggs
1 cup dark Karo syrup
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 Tablespoons dark rum
2 cups fresh cranberries
1 1/4 cup chopped pecans, plus some complete halves for decoration (optional)

Directions:


For the crust:

Coarsely chop pecans. Spread out on jelly roll pan (cookie sheet with sides), and roast in oven at 350º until slightly darkened (about 8 minutes). Allow to cool.

Put into blender or food processor and chop until only slightly coarser than cornmeal. Place pecans in freezer at least a half hour, to deeply chill.

Preheat oven to 450º Fahrenheit. 

Remove from freezer, add 4 Tbs. melted butter. Mix well. Press evenly into 9-inch pie pan† (you may want to lay a sheet of plastic wrap over the mixture while you work, to keep things tidy. Personally, I like the opportunity to lick the buttered pecan crumbs off my fingers when I'm done). Refrigerate until filling is ready.

For the filling:

In a medium or large bowl, stir the 3 eggs, 1 cup syrup, 2/3 cup sugar, 1/4 cup melted butter, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, and 2 Tablespoons dark rum. When the ingredients are fully mixed, add the chopped pecans and the fresh cranberries. Pour into crust.  If you wish to get fancy, you may choose to arrange a few pecan halves on the top of the filling, for decoration (and added nutrition, if you want a really good excuse to do this).

Place on middle rack of oven. Bake at 450º F for 10 minutes (if you're working with a convection oven, 425º). Reduce oven temperature to 350º, continue to bake at least 35-40 minutes, or, until the middle begins to set up. Remove from oven, cool on rack.

When fully cooled, cover and refrigerate at least 3 hours before serving.

Serve with ice cream or whipped cream (I like a rum whipped cream, myself!)


*If you think this doesn't have enough sugar in it, you can always add a little sweetener to the crust, as well. My original source recommended 2 Tablespoons non-sugar syrup, and I've used brown sugar plus cinnamon before. But with this, I don't think it needs any more sweetness, or people's teeth will start to hurt.

†I prefer to use a glass pie pan for this, because I can hold the dish up to the light after I've spread the crust and pressed it in. That way, I can see if I've missed any spots or made an area too thin. Also, the pecan crust seems to crisp a little better in either a glass pan. I think it may be that it continues to cook a little after it comes out of the oven, and the butter finishes it nicely. But don't quote me on that. I'm not a scientist. And I am a little bit nuts.

Graham Cracker Fudge (aka nutty fudge nougat)

It's a cross between a candy and a no-bake bar cookie. And it's a sin not to nibble.

Some years back (possibly even before I was born), the Bat caved to impulse and picked up one of those little booklets of recipes they put in the racks by the cash registers at the supermarket. We don't usually cave to the allure of candies, or to the wild and woolly displays of the tabloids, but recipes -- well, that's quite another thing. And when the Pillsbury prize-winning ones come out, heck, that's like catnip to us. We don't always have to try every one of them, but we has to has, my precious... That's where this one comes from, originally, with slight variations.

Best made near Christmas, so you can justify making lots of it, and taste-testing every last batch.

When we make a batch, it usually disappears in short order. You can probably imagine why.

They're very rich, and in no wise carb-neutral, but they're butter-and-chocolate heaven. And they can be made wheat-free!

So I went a little nuts…

 

Graham Cracker Fudge

Ingredients:

4 c. sugar

1 c. butter

1 can Milnot (or plain evaporated milk)

1 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour*

2 c. graham cracker crumbs*

1 1/2 c. chopped nuts (optional)†

2 tsp vanilla
 pecan halves (optional)

Directions:

Combine sugar, butter, milk product in 3-quart (or larger) saucepan, bring to a boil stirring constantly.

Once in full rolling boil, allow to continue for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove from heat, stir in remaining ingredients until well-mixed.

Spread into a greased jelly roll pan. Allow to cool (may be refrigerated to speed the setting-up process). Cut into 1-inch squares. Top with nut halves, if desired.

* if you need to prepare this for someone on a gluten-free diet, of course you should substitute 1:1 gluten free all-purpose flour for the regular flour (I have, most recently, been using Pamela's, easily available for subscription via Amazon), and, instead of graham cracker crumbs, use almond meal (almond flour). In the depicted batch, I used the unblanched meal, but there's no set rule on this one. I have discovered that, in fact, using the almond flour instead of graham crumbs makes these more tender. There's a fine line (the difference of less than a teaspoon), in using graham cracker crumbs, when these things go from delightful to dry. That doesn't seem to happen with the nut flour.


†Recently, I experimented with adding coarsely-chopped dried tart cherries, along with the chopped pecans. It was pretty darned spiffy. But these goodies need no embellishment. They're just decadent and sinful all by themselves...