Why It Works
- Toasting the pecans for the filling and crust brings out their nutty, buttery flavor.
- Incorporating cream cheese into the dough enhances the tenderness of the crust and adds a welcome slightly tart edge to balance the sweetness of the filling.
- Spooning the chopped pecans into each tart shell before adding the filling ensures an even amount of pecans in each tassie.
There are a few menu items that must be served at an old-fashioned Southern holiday party, including sausage balls, friendship tea, and pecan tassies—bite-size pecan pies with a fabulously gooey filling and shortbread cookie–like crust. The name “tassie” comes from the Scottish word for small cup, which in turn comes from the French word tasse. It’s not hard to see why “cups” made out of short crust filled with a caramelly bourbon-spiked pecan mixture are popular party bites.
Our version of these pecan tartlets, created by our Birmingham, Alabama-based colleague Nicole Hopper, showcases pecans in the dough for the tartlet shells and in the pie filling, as well as a garnish for each little pie, packing the nut’s rich, buttery flavor into each bite.
Serious Eats / Robby Lozano
For the recipe, you’ll start by taking all the pecan halves called for in the recipe and setting aside the 24 prettiest ones to save for decorating each tartlet. Then you’ll toast the rest of the pecans in the oven to bring out their nuttiness and then grind some of them to use in the crust and chop the rest to use in the filling. Why not toast them all? Nicole found in her testing that the pecans used for garnish burned when baked if they’d been pre-toasted, so make sure to set those them aside.
Incorporating some of the pecans into the dough for the tart shells boosts the buttery pecan flavor of the finished tartlets. The crust, which one taster described as “almost shatteringly tender,” also contains cream cheese—a traditional pecan tassie dough ingredient—which enhances the tenderness of the crust and also provides a tiny bit of tartness to help balance the sweetness of the filling. A generous pinch of salt in the crust further offsets the sweetness and brings out the flavors of the filling. Once the dough is prepped, you’ll press it into a mini muffin tin and pop it in the freezer to set up while you prepare the filling.
Along with pecans (obviously), the pie filling includes bourbon and vanilla, which complement the toasty pecans, while orange zest brings a welcome brightness and what one taster called “citrusy intrigue” to the mix. For sweeteners, a combination of molasses-y brown sugar and maple syrup (not Southern, but delicious!) give the filling a more complex flavor than one of those alone would provide. The two sweeteners also give the mixture just the right level of gooeyness—and that level is pretty darn gooey.
Serious Eats / Robby Lozano
Once you’ve made the filling, you’ll add the chopped toasted pecan to each shell, then pour in the filling, and nestle one of those pecan halves on top of each tart. Then into the oven they go until the crust is slightly browned and tender and the filling is bubbling. Unless you enjoy biting into molten lava, let them cool for a couple of minutes before you start popping them in your mouth. They also keep for up to five days, if y’all are those people who plan ahead.
Editor’s Note
This recipe was developed by Nicole Hopper; the headnote was written by Megan O. Steintrager.
Serious Eats / Robby Lozano
