I felt like baking something that wouldn’t require a whole lot of effort tonight. I figured that since there was some vegetarian mincemeat left, but not enough left to make a whole pie, I should probably use that up. In my pondering, I remembered having pecan tassies, which were basically little pecan pies, made in mini-muffin tins. Sure enough, there are about a bajillion recipes for those, along with lots of variations that led me to believe that the mince pie filling would work in that crust.
Despite seeing the same ingredients listed over and over, I was skeptical because all it called for was 1 stick of butter, 3 oz of cream cheese, and 1 cup of flour. The result is rather crumbly and a bit on the bland side, but since it’s just a vehicle for the filling, I’m okay with it, especially since it was wonderfully low-effort. I also like that this is a good example of British-American fusion, as the tassies seem to be an especially Southern cookie, and there’s the staple British holiday dessert of mincemeat pies! So here we have this, somewhere between a cookie and a pie:
Recipe:
Ingredients:
- 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
- 3 oz cream cheese, softened
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- Vegetarian Mincemeat (see previous post)
Method:
- Mix first 3 ingredients together until a dough forms.
- Refrigerate dough 1 hour or until firm enough to work with
- Preheat oven to 325
- Pinch off balls of dough and plop into the cups of an ungreased mini-muffin tin (it just filled my 18-cup tin).
- Push the dough down so that it lines the inside of each cup.
- Fill (but don’t overfill) each cup with the mincemeat.
- Bake for 30 minutes or until the crusts are golden.
- Cool in the tin, then carefully lift each one out with the tip of a knife (they will be crumbly!).
Tasty Messes 