Pecan and cherry cheesecake cookies
I was impressed at how well last week’s biscuits tasted after several days in an airtight tin, so I thought the recipe deserved another outing with a bit of tweaking. First I reduced the amount of sugar by 50g, using 150g where the first recipe required 200g. Glacé cherries made the already sweet biscuits even more sweet, so I tried using Waitrose dried cherries (Love Life range), which tested straight from the packet were very juicy, slightly sour and extremely delicious. Less sugar was definitely better. Sadly, the dried cherries were not very much different from glacé cherries, which I found a bit surprising. But when all’s said and done, these are still jolly nice biscuits, just not amongst my favourites.
Pecan and cherry cheesecake cookies
Ingredients
115 g butter
115 g cream cheese
1/2 teasp vanilla
150 g sugar
100 g wholemeal flour
100 g SR flour
50 g pecans (bashed to the size of coriander seeds)
as many dried cherries as there are cookies
Makes about 30 smallish biscuits
Line several baking trays with baking parchment (wiping butter papers over the base of the tin will help the paper to adhere to the tray.)
Cream butter and cream cheese; then add vanilla and sugar and mix until smooth. Add the flour bit by bit until incorporated and then fold in the bashed pecans and quartered glacé cherries.
Flour you hands, pinch off a walnut size piece of dough and roll into little balls. Put these on the baking tray spacing an inch or so apart. Flour the bottom of a drinking glass and press this down on the cookies to flatten them.
Bake 11-14 minutes until beginning to brown around the edges.
Pecan and cherry cheesecake cookies – last two
This week has seen the first primroses push through – quite late, it seemed to us, to no surprise as although ever other day has been quite sunny, it has been jolly cold – especially in the evenings. So I went back to check my blog for 13 March last year (a year to the day!) and guess what, the church biscuit (actually coffee brownies) is decorated with – the first primroses) and a photograph of the garden shown later in the same post reveals that the garden looks just as bare as it is now). In 2013 I also got very excited about primroses, although this time it was a bit later in the season when they were more plentiful as this post from April 21 shows.
Primrose, hand embroidered by Mary Addison (for altar frontal for Ipsden Church, Oxon.)
Last week a car journey along country roads and bypasses revealed trees and shrubs stiff in their winter clothes and apart from the green of lichen and ivy, there was no hint of new buds or the fluff of white blossom. Yesterday, six days later, we took the same journey and this time there was there was white blossom in intermittent profusion all along our route. Blackthorn was in full flower, its sword like branches softened by frizzes of hazy white and, contrasting with the more unruly blackthorn, were the tall wild cherry trees, not quite in full flower, whose blossom draws attention to their lovely shape which is invisible for most of the year when its silhouette recedes back into the general hedginess of country lanes. Spring may not be in full flood but this little trickle of yellow and white is for the moment animating and enlivening and I must capitalise on this by getting on with the altar frontal flowers.
Water colour of primroses and primulas by Bertha Fowle
I saw this watercolour in a sale of paintings put on in Chiswick 30 years ago and couldn’t resist it.
6 Comments
Hmm, no primroses yet around here, I think, but then they would have drowned in the past two days!
Oh dear, that’s a shame. I think we could all do with a bit of warmth – even when it’s been sunny here, it’s generally stayed cold.
I love the painting Mary, I can easily understand why you fell for it x
The Debbie George paintings mentioned in the next comment are a joy to feast on if you like flower paintings.
You very often use cream cheese in biscuits, Mary, which I never have so I’m going to experiment with this one, perhaps using dried unsweetened cranberries. I feel a bake-a-thon coming on as we have two granddaughters coming to stay for a week at Easter and they will meet up with two more at our house!
As usual, your artistic flair sets off everything to perfection. I zoomed in on that gorgeous cup and plate that the primroses offset beautifully. When you’ve time, you’ll enjoy the paintings of Debbie George who specialises in painting pictures of small flowers in decorated mugs. I loved the mug filled with primroses but it wasn’t for sale so settled on one of a Linnet painted on a mug filled with crocuses. Here in Norfolk there are masses of crocuses but our primroses are not yet open.
Speaking of Debbies… I’m knitting that Debbie Bliss pattern (I bought an ex-library copy from the wonderful Abe Books) for the lace-edged cardigan (in a watermelon colour with pale green edging) you made a few weeks ago. I so agree about needing a diagram but even the first line of instructions after “Divide for back and front” are unnecessarily vague. I’m a novice, too, even after 40 years of knitting here and there, so do need specific, simple instructions.
Umm, I like the idea of using cream cheese and it works well in brownies but seems a bit lost in biscuits, apart from making them soft and moist. So, if you do use it I’d love to known what you think.
(Cup: Anthropologies; plate OKA)
I’ve seen Debbie George’s paintings before but am glad to be reminded of them as they are charming and uplifting. Thank you for nudging me about her.
That Debbie Bliss cardigan is lovely. I got panicked about the shoulder seams but in the end took the wording literally and was surprised that it worked. I did practice stretches of the lace edging until I felt a rhythm and then I loved it and want to put it everywhere! Best of luck, all that garter stitch to begin with made me think I was knitting a dishcloth!