This is a bit of a twist on a Pecan Pie. It has the same sort of filling (melted butter, eggs, corn syrup, brown sugar), but instead of using pecans, I used toasted hazelnuts and I added a twist: I steeped some fresh rosemary (from my ever dwindling herbs in my porch garden — the next frost and they will all be gone) in the melted butter for 20 minutes, to give it an interesting, and in my opinion, lovely harvest flavor. I suppose that you could use other nuts as well — cashews maybe? — if you weren’t up for using hazelnuts but still wanted something different than your standard pecan pie. Serve at room temp, maybe with a bit of whipped cream to cut the richness.
nuts
OK, these are awesomely delicious. And time consuming. I’m not sure I would have made them had I really realized that they are more or less a 5 step process (make dough, make rounds/dip, bake, caramel, chocolate decoration). Actually, who am I kidding … lots of my cookies take this long. They are worth it though.
Before someone asks me, what Hazelnut Croquant is, I’ll just tell you: In a nutshell (no pun intended) it’s like a nut brittle that is than smashed to pieces. Candied nuts, chopped fine. You can do it with any nut sort, but in Germany, they sell pre-packaged hazelnut croquant, so instead of making my own, I went with that. I know, cheater. If you don’t want to go through the effort of making croquant, finely chopped nuts will do. If you use peanuts, these will be little “turtles” (chocolate, peanuts, caramel).
Back from my travels / vacation and somehow it has dramatically become autumn here in New England. Not complaining as fall is my favorite season. And with that, it’s time for autumn flavors. And it’s Canadian Thanksgiving on Monday, so even more of an excuse to have these flavors. Maple. Cranberry. Pecan. These cookies *might* actually be healthy for you, though lots of sugar and butter. Not too sweet, very soft. Quite lovely. And perfect for fall.
So here we are on the day before I leave on vacation and I have half a dozen bananas that need eating. Or using. Or something. I suppose that I could just stick ’em in a ziplock bag and make banana bread later, but even though it is a wildly busy day, making banana bread was a bit of a creative outlet, so I stopped everything that I was doing and made this. Threw in some frozen cranberries too. Somewhat ironic that I am making something very autumn-ish on the last official day of summer, but whatever.
If you like peanuts, these are the cookies for you. Actually, if you *love* peanuts, that would be even better because these are loaded with peanut butter, raosted peanuts and peanut butter chips … in addition to chocolate chips and an actually good for you ingredient of oatmeal. Well, I guess peanuts are good for you too. I’m not sure how I could have added more peanuts to this really. Any ideas for my next try?






