Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Christmas in July Day 4

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July! It was a quiet day at home for me - picked Sophia up from one sleepover and dropped her at a pool party. She went on from there to another pool party and then home with one of her girlfriends for another sleepover. I am certainly beginning to understand Empty Nest Syndrome.

On the agenda for yesterday was catching up on my Christmas movies - check and check. Today's feature is The 12 Dogs of Christmas and I have to reorganize the viewing calendar because I forgot that there was no mail service yesterday so my schedule of movies from Netflix has to be adjusted by one day. My craft project for today is to make a snowman face disc ornament. Tune in tomorrow to see the results.

Probably not the best day to turn on the oven, as the temperatures were in the mid-80s, but I did anyway and turned out a delicious batch of Pecan Tassies from this 1999 Pampered Chef cookbook:

www.pamperedchef.com
This cookbook can be found at http://pages.pumpkinsandpeacockfeathers.com/7273/PictPage/3923707453.html

You need this Pampered Chef tool, the Mini-Tart Shaper, or something similar. If you would like one of these, check it out here.


Pecan Tassies

Tart Shells
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 package (3 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1 cup all-purpose flour

Filling
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup pecans, chopped
Powdered sugar (optional)

Beat butter and cream cheese until smooth. Add flour; mix until a soft dough forms. Cover; refrigerate at least one hour. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place balls of dough into ungreased cups of mini-muffin pan (the one with 24 cups). Dip mini-tart shaper in flour,; press into dough to form tart shells. For filling, melt butter and stir in brown sugar, egg and vanilla. Add chopped pecans. Fill each tart shell with filling. Bake 20-25 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool in pan 3 minutes; remove from pan to cooling rack. Cool completely. Sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired. Makes 24 tarts.

The finished product! The third one from the right on the bottom row is a perfect tart. I found out that you really have to have the tart shaper right in the middle and use firm and even pressure to get the tart shells to look like this. Some of mine are a little uneven and the filling ran into the side of the muffin tin, making them difficult to remove (the real mistakes are in the top left-hand corner and were the first to be eaten!).

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