Cute, bite-sized tarts called pecan tassies. Once they have cooled, sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar. They’re a hit every time and look lovely on a holiday tray!
| Prep Time: | 25 mins |
| Cook Time: | 15 mins |
| Total Time: | 40 mins |
| Servings: | 60 |
| Yield: | 5 dozen |
Ingredients
- 2 cups margarine
- 4 (3 ounce) packages cream cheese
- 4 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 ½ cups packed brown sugar
- 3 eggs
- 3 tablespoons melted butter
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 ½ cups chopped pecans
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
- Beat margarine and cream cheese with an electric mixer in a large bowl until smooth. Beat in flour, 1 cup at a time, until the mixture forms a smooth dough. Roll into small balls, and press into the bottoms and sides of tart pans or mini muffin pans.
- Mix brown sugar, eggs, melted butter, vanilla, and salt together in a medium bowl until smooth. Stir in pecans; spoon mixture into each crust until 2/3 full.
- Bake in the preheated oven until crust is golden brown and filling has puffed up, about 15 to 18 minutes. Let cool in the pans briefly before carefully transferring them onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 166 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 16 g |
| Cholesterol | 17 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Protein | 2 g |
| Saturated Fat | 3 g |
| Sodium | 97 mg |
| Sugars | 9 g |
| Fat | 11 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
Easy receipt however I will use butter next time, margarine doesn’t hold up well. I sprayed the pan with grease and flour spray and they popped out very easy. NO sticking
This recipe actually made 92 I stead of 72 and probably would have made 116 or more if I didn’t run out of the filling. This amount took me over 4 hours to make. At first I was rolling the dough into balls and pressing it into the pan with my fingers and a tablespoon but I felt like that was taking forever and my fingers started to hurt so I just rolled out all the dough so it was thin then cut out circles small enough for my pan.
I made this for a funeral reception, in memory of a friend for whom pecan tassies were her “signature” cookie. I substituted butter for margarine, and the result was a tender, flaky pastry crust. As another reviewer noted, it made over 7 dozen cookies using a standard mini-muffin tin. My only grievance was the time estimate. It took me three hours of nonstop effort! No exaggeration. Make sure you have a block of uninterrupted time for this recipe.
I followed the recipe and I made six dozen even..I added about a table spoon of Jim bean bourbon to it and they turned out amazing… please use a grease spray so they don’t stick.. I had a few in the first batch that didn’t want to come out.. like four which we are right away they were delish the second batch much better..
My mom makes these when I was a kid. This recipe replicated my memory perfectly. Wonderful
Have been making these for years at Christmas and found a wooden dowel sold by pampered chef works perfectly for forming the dough in the mini pan. Dust it in some flour between tassies so it doesn’t stick. It will make everything go faster!!
Wonderful recipe. Everyone loved these.
These were so delicious. I followed the recipe exactly.
Made these for a Christmas Party and they were a huge hit!
Excellent taste! The recipe makes way more than 60! I use a wooden tool I got for my mixer to push food into the chute to press into the dough balls in order to form a shell.
Gosh, they are christmas cookie ‘musts’! I have made these forever and they go over well. I use a wooden press to press the crust into the mini muffin tins. The cream cheese makes it so flaky that they are just delightful. You make sort of a wall by using the wooden press and it allows you to fill the shells with the pecan mix – do NOT over fill or they will run out of the crust and be difficult to get out of the tins. These are an absolute hit and have been for years. Sometimes they are called Tea Time Tassies but I think those are ‘walnut’ rather than pecan. Not sure. Just sure they are good
Everyone loved it! Will make it again.
Tips: make the dough, scoop into balls using a small ice cream scooper, then chill the balls in the fridge while you preheat the oven and make the filing. Press balls of dough into mini muffin tin using the back of a teaspoon to form each shell. Dough makes 60 mini muffin size shells but you’ll have leftover filling. Use a toothpick to run along the outer edge of each tassie to loosen any melted sugars before turning them out.
I have been making my husbands moms recipe for forty years. I made this recipe today and I will never make mother in laws again. Hers always stuck on the baking pans and the filling always leaked. This was a perfect recipe. Not one of the seventy two I made stuck. My husband was very skeptical about me making a different one but I can’t keep him out of them. LOL thank you thank you thank you for a new member to our Christmas traditions. I can’t wait for family to give them a try. Happy Me!!!!!
read reviews first, didn’t know to chill the dough. most likely won’t make again.
These were a phenomenal hit at our family Thanksgiving! The wonderful boon of tassies is that it offers the taste of a pecan pie without the cloying sweetness…and it is already portion controlled!
These are one of my favorites! I followed the recipe exactly and I think they turned out amazing. I used my tart tamper to press the dough into the mini tin which I think saved me a ton of time. I also had to bake mine for 20 min before they turned golden brown. I hope they make it to Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.
After making this a few times.. I finally came up with my own wonderful version. Instead of the dough I use Phyilo cups. I pop the cups into the oven on 325 for 5 minutes. Then follow the recipe as is stated, however I also add a bag of “bit’s o toffee” and 1/2 cups of extra chopped pecans. then scoop the mixture into the Phyilo cups and bake for an additional 12 minutes. Once done let them rest for 20 minutes. It honestly taste like miniature baklava cups. This recipe is such a hit I have friends/family/neighbors etc started paying me to make several dozen for their family or parties.
Light and delicious, I made a half batch which yielded about 4 dozen. I will definitely make these again next year!!! (I also used butter.)
If I was going to make this recipe again I would do a few things differently. 1 – I would HALVE it. Because it was too much for my Kitchen Aid to handle without a lot of mess. 4 cups of flour, 1lb of butter and 4 boxes of cream cheese. My mixer struggled with capacity. 2 – I would finely chop the pecans. I did a regular chop as per the recipe and it made for sloppy looking tops. I also had a ton of filling leftover that I ended up tossing. 3 – something didn’t go quite right with the crusts. They are gummy. So I would bake them at 375 degrees instead of 350. I wonder if I did something specifically wrong. Maybe I made the crusts too thick? Lastly, this isn’t a 25 minute prep recipe. I love tassies but this wasn’t foolproof for me.
Change to serving of 40 and used an 8 ounce cream cheese.