Eat To The Beat: Get Baked! Vol. 1 - Lassies with Tassies

There are a plethora of ways to deal with life's many stresses. Some people throw on their fanciest sweatband and shoot some mad hoops. Some whip out their MasterCard and hit up QVC. Others smoke crack. I like to bake delicious treats for my family and friends. So I decided to start this feature, uncleverly titled "Get Baked!", on Eat to the Beat. In it you will hear about my many baking adventures and misadventures. It will often feature other rockin' renegade bakers (a.k.a. "my friends") and their righteous recipes. So sit back and enjoy the first edition. Baking is totally the new yoga.

My adorable and bake-savvy friend Lauren (pictured with her giant chocolate zucchini cupcake), aware of my propensity to social baking, graciously invited me over to do just tha

t. Her Alice in Wonderland-esque confection was delicious. The cake was moist and dense (in the most delicious of ways). Even after a small snafu with the icing dispenser, Lauren was able to come up with a brilliant design (one that makes me want to high five every cupcake I see from now on). Even though chocolate is usually my least favorite cake flavor, I plan on trying out the recipe for myself ASAP.

I browsed through many a cookbook in search of the perfect recipe. I wanted something that I'd never tried before, but also something that was inexpensive to accomplish. I finally decided on a recipe from my Favorite Recipes of Methodist Women: Desserts cookbook that I acquired at a yardsale just last summer. I must admit that settled on this particular sweet due mostly to its funny name: Teatime Tassies. These are basically just tiny pecan pie tarts, but they were pretty delicious. The instructions were simple and it was fun to make. I made some with little tops on them just because I had some extra dough (we lovingly called them "sassies"), but the taste of the tassie was unaffected. Make sure to grease your mini-muffin tin well, because these little buggers would be difficult to get out otherwise. Enjoy!

Teatime Tassies

Dough Ingredients:

1 3 oz package of cream cheese
1/2 cup butter

1 cup sifted all purpose flour

Filling:

2 tbsp. butter

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

dash of salt

1 1/2 cups pecan pieces

Let cheese and butter soften at room temperature. Blend well; stir in the flour. Shape into 1 inch balls and press into bottoms and sides of muffin tins.

Beat all of the filling ingredients EXCEPT PECANS until smooth. Sprinkle half of pecans in the pastry cups. Add the filling mixture and then the remainder of the pecans.

Bake at 325 degrees for 25 minutes. Yields 30 tarts.