PECAN SANDIES (Cookies) By Dr. Jay

"Pecan Sandies
Road Cookies for the Canny Bus
By Jay R. Cavanaugh, PhD

I love pecans. You can’t live in New Orleans without developing a serious pecan habit. In the Big Easy (or Big Sleazy to the locals) we put pecans in everything but red beans and rice. You’ll find these tasty nuts on fish, in candy, cakes, stuffing, and, of course, cookies. Nurse Nancy Wife and I started out to make some sort of Russian Tea Cake but ended up closeted with pecans. We started with those big lovely organic pecan halves, Tillamook sweet cannabutter, turbinado sugar, confectioners sugar, bourbon vanilla, and flour. Later we’re going for the ultimate treat, canny pralines but that’s another recipe J

This recipe is a little tough because it uses only cannabutter as a source for fat. No straight butter here, only the real deal green stuff. That means that it’s tough to get good consistency in the cookies and Pecan Sandies have to have some snap or they’re just not Sandies. All of this only means that you’ve got to use your eyes and touch to make certain the dough is not too moist or dry but like baby bears porridge, just right. We love to experiment and that means that sometimes the cookies don’t come out the way we thought. That’s OK, just make more and eat the crumbs!

Ingredients:

1 cup pecans ground into small chunks (and a little bit of pecan flour)
1 cup Better Bud Butter
2 cups of all purpose flour (maybe a bit more or less depending)
½ tsp baking powder
1 tablespoon of bourbon vanilla extract (try it - you’ll never use the old vanilla again)
1 cup turbinado sugar
½ cup sifted powdered sugar

Directions:

Cream the cannabutter and sugar together in a mixing bowl. Make sure the mixture is nice and smooth. Add the vanilla while creaming. Sift together the flour and baking powder and gradually add to the butter/sugar cream with gentle mixing to avoid lumps. Add the chopped pecans. Cover the dough and refrigerate for at least 3 hours. While you wait for the dough to completely chill do something responsible like cleaning up or chores because you won’t be able to do much after you try the cookies.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and roll golf sized balls which you then gently flatten a bit in the palm of your hand. Place the flattened balls (one-third of an inch thick) on a nonstick ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes at 300 degrees or until slightly firm and brown (it’s hard to tell since these Sandies are SO green). Remove from the oven and very gently place on a rack to cool. While still hot dust the Sandies with sifted powdered sugar. If you try to roll them in powdered sugar while still warm they will crumble. Once these Sandies cool they will harden. Until they firm up they don’t like to be touched. Please be patient.

Ingredient Note: Recipes for Pecan Sandies abound and have quite a bit of variety in the amounts of ingredients used. Don’t be afraid of using a bit less sugar or a bit more flour to get these puppies right. The two constants are one whole cup of bud butter and one whole cup of pecans. You might want to jazz these Sandies up with a bit more bourbon vanilla and/or a dash of graded cinnamon.

Potency Note: Warning! If you check the total volume of ingredients of Sandies versus our other cookies, you’ll find that they are just about three times more powerful by weight. We discovered this obvious fact by crumbling our first batch, eating the crumbs, and being forced to retire early. Yum! Nancy Wife points out that Pecan Sandies are basically just sweetened Better Bud Butter and Pecans with enough flour to hold them together and enough powdered sugar to get your hands sticky.

Recommended Beverage: Earl Grey or English Breakfast tea for mornings or afternoons. When serving Pecan Sandies as a desert treat, you might want to try a chilled Syrah or even a good aged tawny Port.

Store out of the light in an airtight container.

http://www.letfreedomgrow.com/recipes/pecan_sandies.htm

nice

thanks both you and J. rip. gonna try some soon

sounds great but can i use regular vanilla extract instead of the bourbon vinilla.. im not sure i can find it here far up north...but well worth the effort.......

have you guys ever saw the recipe for canna lemon bars?

The term Bourbon is a geographic reference to the Bourbon Islands, Madagascar, Comoro, Reunion, Seychelles and Mauritius, off the east coast of Africa.
In the 1800's, they were ruled by the French, whose ruling family at the time were the Bourbons.
Me, I would have guessed it to be involving the very likes of Mr. Jack Daniels himself....

So, it's not a Problem, I'm sure they will still be tasty, just try to use as good of a quality vanilla as one can get their grubby (freshly Washed?) little hands on for optimum results.
A company named "Watkins" has a long term reputation for selling a very good quality vanilla extract.

Watkins Vanilla is made from the world’s finest Madagascar Bourbon vanilla beans—brewed using the process we perfected over the course of a century.
Our blending of ingredients makes the flavor bake-proof and freeze-proof as well as double-strength.

Click to expand...

A general search for "vanilla extract" will produce many purchase opportunities.

Curing or Fermentation

Vanilla beans must be cured after harvesting to develop their aromas and flavors.
Vanilla Pods:
Different methods of curing are used in different countries.
The beans are left in the sun each day to dry, then wrapped in blankets and taken indoors to “sweat” at night.
This process happens daily for five to six months; it engenders a naturally induced enzymatic action where the glucovanillin inside the thousands of tiny seeds in each pod, is converted to to glucose and vanillin.
It is here that the fermenting vanilla pods take on their flavor and aroma (vanillin aroma is the dominant flavor characteristic of vanilla).

The cure is critical to producing good vanilla:
Climatic conditions, the timing of the harvest, and the extent of sweating by the pods during curing, among other factors, will determine the vanillin content and thus the quality of the cured pods.
Well-cured beans, packed in airtight containers, can keep their qualities for a long time.

During the curing process the green bean-like pods are converted into the dark, familiar dried vanilla pods.

Double strength vanilla extract is made from 200 beans per gallon of alcohol, as opposed to the single strength vanilla extract, made from 100 beans per gallon (triple strength vanilla extract is made from 300 beans per gallon).
It is a strength indicator, not a quality indicator.
Thus, half (or a third, for 3x) of the amount is needed in the recipe.
The product is used largely by culinary professionals who want to achieve specific results.
For example, if making a white cake or frosting, the goal is to use as little extract by volume as possible, in order to preserve the pure white color.
Using half as much vanilla extract enables this.
Others use 2x and 3x vanilla to achieve a stronger vanilla taste.
Two-fold (2x) vanilla means that one only needs half the amount that the recipes calls for.
An astonishing 97% of all vanilla products are synthetic.
Artificial vanilla has been around since the late 19th century.