Well, looky here. I managed to pry myself away from work long enough to tweak a few photos and slap ‘em together to bring Nana to you today. And lucky you are, because I am finally sharing my family’s very very favorite Christmas cookie, the TEA TOSSIE.
No, I don’t know why they are called that.
They are kind of like teensy pecan pies. Bite sized pecan pies. Probably dangerous, but what the hell, I only make them once a year.
Nana used to make a million kinds of cookies at Christmastime. A kind of insane amount. There were some weird strawberry-looking things, rocky road, buckeyes, peanut butter dates, peanut blossoms, starlight mint surprises, sugar cookies and I’m sure more that I am forgetting. I can’t even compete with that assortment. I have to contain my cookie output to a few different ones. I don’t have that many people to feed anyway and would probably just eat them all myself at midnight.
Anyway, these are a two-stepper because you have to make the dough for the tiny pie crusts–it’s easy, I swear–put it into your mini muffin tins then fill with the pecan stuff. It takes a while–just for chilling dough–but once you are going it’s simple. And oh, so worth it.
Ingredients
- FOR DOUGH:
- 6 oz cream cheese, room temperature
- 1 cup butter, room temperature
- 2 cups flour
- FOR FILLING:
- 1 egg
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- dash salt
- 1 Tbsp butter
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2/3 cup broken pecans
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325. Grease 3 mini-muffin tins.
- With a mixer, combine butter and cream cheese. Slowly add flour until the dough comes together. Form into a ball and chill slightly.
- Form dough into 3 dozen balls, approximately 1 1/2 inch in size.
- With your fingers flatten each ball into a disc and press into the tins, making sure the dough goes all the way up the side.
- Mix the filling ingredients and fill the prepared tins.
- Bake for 25 minutes, or until golden brown.
- Let cool slightly in tins. Run a sharp knife around the cookies to loosen them, and then finish cooling on a rack.
