pecans

Caramel Apple Oatmeal Cookies

November 14, 2017

A couple weekends ago I put out an Instagram poll asking folks what I should bake over the weekend. Most people voted between pumpkin pie, apple pie, cookies, and Rice Krispie treats (so, just about everything I posted last week). One follower had a very specific request: Caramel Apple Walnut Oatmeal Cookies.

I mean, those just sounded too good NOT to make so I added it to my list of baking experiments.

Fortunately for all of us, they turned out amazing! Imagine a soft oatmeal cookie wrapped around a hunk of gooey caramel. Oh baby! Fresh from the oven, there is nothing better!

I started off by making a basic oatmeal cookie dough. But I replaced 1/2 cup of butter with shredded apple. To shred the apple, I took the apple straight to a box grater and grated it until I hit the core. The shredded apple adds lots of flavor, some moisture, and cuts out some of the fat from the butter! You could almost call these cookies somewhat healthy.

Except for that huge chuck of caramel right in the middle. That really negates any of the health-factor from the apples.

I scooped out balls of the cookie dough and stuck a caramel square right in the middle. Then I covered up the caramel with a bit more dough and rolled it into a ball.

After a quick stop in the oven these cookies are ready for the taking! I highly recommend only letting these puppies cool for a few minutes so that you can enjoy them while the caramel is still ooey gooey.

However, they are still perfectly yummy at room temperature, but the caramel will just be chewy instead of gooey.

If you don’t want one chunk of caramel in the middle of the cookie, you could instead add caramel chips. That was actually the original recommendation by the follower who posted this recipe idea. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any caramel chips and was too lazy to go to the store, so caramel squares it was!

It basically comes down to whether you want caramel disbursed throughout your cookie or one caramel center surprise.

There are no wrong answers. It’s caramel. And apples! And cookies! Those will always be the right answer in my book!

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Mexican Wedding Cookies

May 4, 2017

These little sugar coated Mexican Wedding cookies may be more closely associated with Christmas, but cookies are pretty much good year-round in my book! Especially these cookies. They are like little pecan packed shortbread cookies dusted in powdered sugar. Yum, right?!

I’m not sure what took me so long to make Mexican Wedding Cookies. They are so much easier to make than I originally thought. Like I said above, they are almost identical to a shortbread recipe – butter, sugar, and flour – with just the added ingredient if pecans.

First cream together butter, sugar, and vanilla. Then mix in the flour until you have a pretty dry dough. Something that looks kinda dry, but when pressed together forms a ball.

Next add in the nuts. You can use either walnuts or pecans. I actually used a mix of both because I was just short of pecans.

I ground up my nuts into a course meal, where some of the nuts were finely ground, and some were still in chunk form. I also measured my nuts after they were ground. So I had one and a half cups of ground nuts, not one and a half cups of whole nuts.

Next, because this dough is fairly dry, I recommend that you let it chill for at least 30 minutes so that all the moisture from the butter gets soaked into the flour and all the flavors meld together.

It will also be a bit easier to roll into balls once its chilled. I used my little cookie scooper to get evenly sized cookies.

Finally, its time to roll them in some sugar! This part is fun! Also, very messy. Your kitchen will look a little questionable when all is said and done.

I dropped let my cookies cool off a bit before I dropped them into the powdered sugar. The hot cookies will form a gummy sugary coating. I wanted a light powdery coating, so I let them cool until they were warm, but not to hot to handle.

And if thats not enough sugar for you, you can sprinkle even more on top. As you can see, that’s what I did. I love me some sugar.

But don’t worry about these being overly sweet. They are perfectly sweet. The cookies themselves actually have very little sugar in them. You bite in and have the initial taste of sugar, but the interior cookie is nutty and buttery!

Plus they are just so pretty! It’s like they are the perfect cookie for a wedding. Who knew?

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Maple Pecan Baked Brie

November 18, 2016

Maybe its just me, but whenever I eat brie I feel so fancy and grown up. It’s probably because it’s French; the French are so fancy and grown up. What’s great about baked brie is that just because it’s “fancy” doesn’t mean its complicated to make. This recipe is actually quite easy.

Can you stick a baking sheet in an oven? Can you stir some nuts in a pan? Great! Then you can make this recipe!

To bake the brie, I just popped the unwrapped wheel of cheese on a baking sheet and baked it for about 10 minutes until it was soft. I basically checked the “doneness” by poking the cheese until it felt soft enough. There really isn’t any rhyme or reason to it. I just wanted it to be gooey on the inside.

While the brie was baking, I stirred together some butter, brown sugar, maple syrup, pecans, salt, and pepper. Yes…salt and pepper. You probably weren’t expecting me to add salt and pepper to this distinctly sweet nut topping, but the salt and pepper actually makes all the other flavors in the cheese and pecans really pop. So don’t skip the salt and pepper!

Then once the brie was baked and the pecans were nice and coated in sugar and maple syrup, I poured the pecans right on top of the brie. The warmth of the nuts kept the cheese warm and soft. Even if you make this ahead of time, you can rest assured that the cheese will still be soft and gooey well afterwards.

I made this particular baked brie for book club. Of course, I made it head of time so that I could take some pictures before the girls showed up. But it was still nice and warm, and the cheese just oozed out by the time they arrived. In fact, it was still warm and gooey even afterwards when I was “cleaning up” (or, cleaning the plate by eating the leftover cheese and apples).

I served up the brie with some apple slices and crackers. I personally preferred the apple slices. Not only was it the healthier choice (an apple covered in cheese, nuts, and sugar is of course healthy), but I personally love the combination of cheese and apples. Especially those slightly tart apples with the nice salty brie!

Don’t you think this would be a great appetizer to bring to your Thanksgiving dinner or any of your Christmas parties? The pecans and apples are definitely seasonally appropriate. And brie is always a good decision. The combination of all the flavors makes it a definite crowd pleaser. People will be so impressed by such a fancy appetizer, only you and I will know the truth. 😉

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Pecan and Herb Crusted Pork

November 16, 2016

Every so often I get on these kicks where everything I seem to make has the same ingredients. Last month, it just about everything I made had pumpkin. This month, it seems like everything I’ve made has had pecans in it. Well, not just pecans, but maple syrup, too. First it was this cake. Now it’s this pecan and herb crusted pork tenderloin. And it’s not the last pecan recipe you will see this month, either.

I have been trying to come up with some Fall recipes that could also double as a Thanksgiving turkey substitute. I know…no turkey on Thanksgiving is practically un-American. But 1) not everyone likes turkey, and 2) not everyone wants to commit to to making a turkey if they aren’t serving a dozen or more people.

Since my husband and I rarely travel home for Thanksgiving, this pecan and herb crusted pork is something I would make for just the two of us and still feel like we are having a hearty Thanksgiving meal. In fact, the crust itself smells just like Thanksgiving. It has all your those delicious Thanksgiving flavors you’d probably find in your favorite stuffing recipe: sage, thyme, rosemary, pecans….yum, right?

To get the pork nice and flavorful, I first, marinated it in a puree of the herbs, olive oil, garlic, and maple syrup. After the pork had rested overnight, I rolled it in some crushed up pecans. Since the pork was covered in the sticky herb pesto (thank you maple syrup!), the pecans stuck right to it.

Now all that was left was to roast the pork.

I placed the pork loins on a baking sheet and covered them with tin foil so that the pork stayed moist and the pecan crust wouldn’t burn. Since the pork took an hour or so to roast, I decided to use that time to multi-task and roast up a nice side of maple coated brussels sprouts. Why not put maple syrup on everything?

This pork recipe lived up to every expectation. I didn’t even miss the turkey. Sorry, turkey…you’ve been replaced. What I love about the pork is that it stays so much more moist than turkey, and this particular recipe had so much flavor! Sometimes I am disappointed with my Thanksgiving turkey because not only is it dry, but it’s kind of bland. Which is why I make sure to have a bite of stuffing along with every bite of turkey. But this pork is practically coated in all the flavors in stuffing….and….it’s actually pretty healthy!

And if you are like me, that means you can have an extra helping of pie later.

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