These make a lovely hostess gift – I’ve been giving them to friends wrapped in cellophane bags and tied with some off-cuts of orange velvet ribbon that Bob the costume guy gave me (in return for a bag of cookies). They make the apartment smell more Thanksgiving-ish than any scented candle, they take five minutes to make and ten minutes to bake.
Pumpkin spiced pecan cookies (makes 12)
1 1/4 cup plain flour loosely packed (8 oz)
1/4 cup sugar (2 oz) (plus extra for rolling)
1 1/2 sticks of butter (6 oz) cold and cut into cubes
¼ cup chopped toasted pecans2 rounded tsp pumpkin spice mix
- Pre heat the oven to 400
- Tip the flour, sugar, spices and butter cubes into a bowl, then rub them through your fingertips until the mixture looks like sandy rubble (or use a mixer)
- Press together into a dough
- Tip in the chopped pecans and stir to combine
- Pour some sugar onto the board (about 2 tbsp – and add 2 tsp of cinnamon if you think cinnamon sugar would taste good here) , then take tsps of the mixture and roll in the sugar into balls
- Place these balls on a baking tray with plenty of space between them, squash them down into cookies, then bake for 5-10 minutes depending on the thickness
If you can make that you can make this
- replace half the flour with ground almonds
This recipe originally appeared along with the tale of my first Thanksgiving in New York and the 3 Thanksgiving dinners.