The Holiday Recipe Swap Continues: Maple Pecan Shortbread Cookies

We are happy to continue our virtual holiday recipe swap with an entry from Caroline, the author of Table for 5, a really terrific blog, and a regular LTIR follower. This recipe seems like a no-brainer to add to the holiday baking. Remember, if you've got a great recipe, send it along. The more, the merrier for all. Thanks for reading! --Janet and Rachel

A long time ago, I owned a small catering company. For each lunch or dinner that I cooked, I would prepare a batch of cookies to give the host or hostess, a small token of thanks. Most often, the cookies would be Maple Pecan Shortbread Cookies. Once, I was rushing to finish a job, flying around my kitchen and putting finishing touches on trays of salad, sandwiches and pasta. My daughter, Lucy, wandered into the kitchen just then, needing my attention. In an effort to distract her and buy myself a few more minutes, I handed her one of those cookies. She took a bite and slid back against the cabinets, a dreamy look on her 6-year-old face. It was love at first bite, and she never forgot that cookie.

From time to time, she would ask if we could make the cookies again, and I always put her off. Until Christmas of that year. Between batches of sugar cookies and spiced nuts, she asked again. That time, I said yes.

It was the start of a really good tradition, one we look forward to all year. There are other seasonal treats that we indulge in year-round, like pumpkin pie for Paul's birthday in July. But I like to wait for these crumbly, buttery cookies until the holidays. Each bite melts in your mouth, giving way to the maple-y pecans. They are pleasantly sweet and have just a hint of salt. An ideal cookie. Lucy and I have been counting the days until it's time for Maple Pecan Shortbread Cookies. Last she told me, it was 46 days. And counting.

Maple Pecan Shortbread Cookies

ingredients
1 cup pecans
1/8 cup maple syrup
3 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 cup packed brown sugar
3 sticks butter
1 teaspoon vanilla


method
Heat the oven to 350°. Mix the pecans and maple syrup in a bowl and spread onto a cookie sheet. Bake for 4 minutes; stir and bake for 4 more minutes. Pour the nuts into a bowl and let cool. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Heat oven to 350°. Grease a few baking sheets. Break apart the pecans and chop them in the food processor. They should be chopped small, but not too fine. Add the flour and salt, pulsing. Add the butter and vanilla, and brown sugar. You may need to add more flour; the dough should not be sticky. Remove from the bowl of the processor, and divide into two sections, each on a piece of waxed paper. Form logs approximately 3" in diameter. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours. Slice the logs into 1/4" thick rounds. Bake for 12-15 minutes, watching closely. They should be lightly browned.

Home for the Holidays

Halloween is over and that means we're starting to think about holiday baking. Rachel and I are planning a virtual holiday recipe swap with you all and will be kicking that off soon. Stay tuned. In the meantime, here are some of my remembrances of my dad.

I did not grow up in a household with a strong Christmas baking tradition. My dad made legendary pumpkin and apple pies for Thanksgiving, but come Christmas, he was much more focused on the ham and side dishes. My mother, probably in part due to my father’s pie-making prowess, mostly didn’t even try to compete in the baking arena. Sure, she made tasty chocolate chip cookies and various other dessert dishes in general — her sour cream cheese pie is still one of my go-to desserts when I need a cheesecake fix but don’t want to put in all that time — but she didn’t go out of her way to make anything special at Christmas.

But then my father retired, and he became fixated with making holiday candy. He called the recipe Bristol Road Kitchens Toffee, a reference to the road in Maine he and my mother lived in at the time, and added this little subhead on the recipe card: expensive but worth it.

The expense part undoubtedly stemmed from his days of scrimping as a young man during the Depression. Today, I regularly use butter and the darkest — read more expensive — chocolate bits in all of my recipes. I wouldn’t think twice of substituting anything else.

But the real worth, if you will, of this toffee was that my father made it. My dad was a tall man, broad of chest, with hands the size of kitchen mitts. While gregarious in social situations, he was reticent with his emotions at home. His hugs, while solid when they occurred, were not daily occurrences, and he preferred to show his love rather than say, “I love you” out loud.

And so he cooked. Not all the time but on the weekends and holidays, sometimes for the cocktail parties he and my mother would throw. It was his way of saying he cared.

His holiday candy became an annual tradition, eagerly anticipated at our house each December. He would mail the candy from Maine or, later, California, and then call to make sure it had arrived in the proper condition. One year the box included the recipe card, a moment that made me both happy and sad, because while I was pleased to receive the secret, I knew it also meant that his days of making it were nearing an end.

Like my father, I have made creating certain foods as much a part of Christmas as Advent calendars and candlelight Christmas Eve services. Come the day after Thanksgiving, you can find me making the first of many loaves of Swedish gingerbread. A couple of weeks before Christmas, I’m busy making rolling out dough for Swedish pepparkakor, a kind of ginger snap.

And, of course, I make a batch of the toffee. Pulling out the recipe card filled with my father’s chicken scratch (seriously, if unreadable handwriting is a criteria, my dad should have been a doctor). By now, the red ink a little smeared from having been picked up with wet hands, and the card is dirtied with bits of chocolate and sugar from toffee-making sessions over the years.

As our children have aged — the last one is in college — I’ve cut back on the quantity of these goods. Where I once made two batches of pepparkakor, I now make one; loaves of Swedish gingerbread are down to about 6 now, depending on who is receiving one as a housewarming holiday gift.

And the toffee is now just one batch. About two years ago, I asked our youngest, who was still at home and is the main consumer of this toffee, if maybe I should forgo making it. After all, plenty of other holiday edibles were in the house. “Are you kidding me?” he said in the inflection only a teenager can muster. “Not an option.”

I was secretly pleased, of course. I want to keep making the toffee and other special items. Making these annual recipes is a way of connecting with my father, who is gone, and with my children and our happy memories of the holidays when we were all together under one roof. Some day I’ll be ready to pass the wooden spoon. But not just yet.

(Illustration is available for free at Dreamstime.)