yeah, the design is really showing up! taking notes.
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I’ve narrowed the list down to a dozen varieties, 8 to mail to family and put on gift plates (keep some for us), plus 4 items made just for us. Almost all l have been featured at some point in years past, swapped in/out amid the every-year handful. The only new one on the list - just for us - is fruitcake cookies.
1 - Pecan Tassies, .2 - Oatmeal Raisin, 3 - Cranberry Spirals, 4 – Lemony Stripes, 5 - Apricot Foldovers and stars, 6 -Chocolate covered cherry cookies, 7 - molasses spice ginger, 8 - Mary B’s no bake peanut butter marshmallow krispies cookie
For us:
9 - Crispix Snack Mix, 10 - Fruitcake cookies, 11– Almond Biscotti, 12 - Krumkaka
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I always like seeing your list
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I’d love your tassie recipe – I’ve been reading about it for so long!
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Pecan Tassie Recipe with my notes - originally from a hometown church cookbook
Pecan Tassies
Dough refrigerates 1 hour - bake 325 for 25 to 30 min. Makes about 2 dozen; double recipe made 4 dozen and gave extra filling (about a half cup). Plan 30 minutes for form, smoosh and fill a double batch / 4 dozen. Due to my mixer’s size/strength I don’t try to make more than a double recipe of dough at one time. Don’t chill for much more than 1 hour – chilled overnight dough got too stiff and VERY hard to work with.
Use smaller cookie scoop (a bit more than 1 T.) close to level for putting dough in cups. Flour tassie smoosher (dip to dust in flour from small cup) between each one.
1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
Filling:
1 egg
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 Tablespoon butter melted
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup chopped pecans
To Make Crust: Blend softened cream cheese, 1/2 cup butter, flour and salt. Chill 1 hour.
Shape into 1-inch balls (about 24 balls). Press balls into cavity of greased mini muffin tins, making small cups. (I use Pampered Chef “tassie smoosher” - mini tart shaper 1590 - dusted with flour. You may use your thumb or put plastic wrap over a cork or top of a water/pop bottle and use that).
To Make Filling: Beat egg in a small mixing bowl. Add brown sugar, 1 tablespoon butter melted and vanilla. Mix well. Stir in pecans. Spoon about 1 level measuring teaspoon into shells, taking care not to overfill..
Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for 25 - 30 minutes or even 35 min., until filling is set. Cool in pan (recommended) or wire rack. Use wooden spreader knife to help gently remove tassies from pan.
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Thank you!
I use a very similar recipe, so here are my own notes for reference: the dough is the same, and I weigh 21 grams for each mini muffin cup. I prefer more pecans in the filling — the recipe I got from former CH poster roxlet calls for 2/3 cup, and I use 3/4. I highly recommend refrigerating or freezing the pan for an hour or more after putting the dough in, then pulling it out, filling and baking directly from cold. This gives the flakiest results. They are also very good with dried cranberries, or chopped fresh or frozen cranberries, in place of half the pecans.
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Baked off some of the devil’s thumbprints tonight, much later than I should’ve been doing, but the dough was already 48 hours in the fridge.
Then I rushed to cool them completely so I could add the carefully-sourced ruby chocolate, but when I went to fetch the chocolate, I couldn’t find it.
So now I’ve eaten a lot of delicious raw dough and two unfilled but very good chocolate thumbprints. I must say, they’re not very photogenic, and that’s a grave disappointment. The flavor and texture are outstanding, though - like very fine brownie cookies.
I flash-froze the second tray of dough balls before rolling in sugar and baking, in an attempt to keep them from spreading so much. Making them smaller and quickly freezing them did help. I wish I had a wine cork to make the indentations with; everything I used (a bottle cap, my thumb, the end of a big wooden spoon) was kind of cumbersome.
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ETA: i might try to shape them, make the indentation, and then flash-freeze before baking.
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Probably more so with the ruby chocolate.
Other ideas for indentation help - toy marble (from a game set), floral vase marble, shell macaroni, sewing thimble, plastic wrap over top of a condiment bottle. Or swing by a wine shop that does sampling and ask for a spare cork. Or a craft store that sells corks in bags for projects.
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Sorry they didnt work out. Whenever I make new cookies, i will at first bake a batch of 6 to see how they bake and whether they spread. As i said mine turned out looking very nice using the smallest scoop i have which is no more than 1 teaspoon.
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yes, i did the same - made six first, then tried the freezing trick and made another half-dozen. the taste is so good that i’m not giving up on them.
i still have a little dough left and i’m going to try again, with smaller cookies and additional freezing.
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Or buy a bottle of wine with a cork, uncork it, drink the wine and use the cork to make the indentation. 
I’ve got hundreds of corks in bags that I need to give to a friend I haven’t seen in person as she sells them on eBay, I think.
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When my mom bakes her family recipe for kourabiedes, she does a test cookie of 1 cookie on the baking sheet, to make sure egg to butter to flour ratio is right, and that the cookie isn’t going to spread too much. I guess the size of the eggs being somewhat of a variable, could affect the spread, maybe also, how whipped or cold the butter was before adding the sugar , etc. She keeps doing a test cookie of 1 until she gets it right. and this is with a recipe that has been in our family for over 90 years. This is the one cookie that is somewhat of a close to perfect cookie, to which all other kourabiedes are compared. lol
I admit, I don’t do this , or the trial of 6 cookies, with new recipes for most new cookies.
It might be more important for new recipes for butter cookies and other cookies that contain more butter or chocolate.
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LOL - Not knowing mig’s preferred beverage and timing, I hesitated to suggest. If it’s a glass a week or from screw-top bottles the cork may not be available soon enough.
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Also Free On Board (a shipping term).
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