Toffee Pecan Shortbread Cookies Recipe

These. cookies. are. delicious.  End of Story.  You must have these Toffee Pecan Shortbread Cookies on your holiday trays, or just make them because you need something yummy to eat!  You know the classic Snowball Cookies, aka—Mexican Wedding Cookies and Russian Teacake Cookies?  That’s pretty much these but kicked up a notch with toffee pieces.  Delicious!  I have also made these with just toffee pieces and mini chocolate chips.  Also de-lish.  But I forgot to photograph them and I gave them all away.  Well, okay, I tasted one, too.  ;)

I found the recipe/idea for these cookies at Susan’s Farmgirl Fare.  I never realized Susan is just a hop, skip and a jump from me here, but I’ve been enjoying her photographic blog for a while now and she always has yummy food and recipes to share.  Susan adapted this recipe for somewhere else, you can check out her link and see her shortbread cookies, too. 

After making some just like hers, with the toffee and mini chocolate chips (and forgetting to photograph them), I decided to try them with toffee and pecans. 

Hi, there, very yummy cookies!

I must tell you, these were very good with the mini chocolate chips, but I made some for my mom, who doesn’t eat chocolate and shipped them to her.  And I meant to take half the dough with the toffee and pecans and add some chocolate chips, but alas, I forgot to do that.  So I decided to dip some of the cookies in melted chocolate.  They looked great and tasted even better! 

I dipped a bunch of them half way in the melted chocolate (I used some of the Scharffen Berger chocolate they gave us at the Food BlogHer Conference in San Francisco in September—hello—amazing chocolate!)  When I started running out of enough chocolate to keep dipping them, I drizzled a few with the remaining melted chocolate.  Now I love a darn good chocolate chip cookie, you all know that, but these just might be right up there as one of my favorite cookies.  And they are quite dangerous to have around!  I love giving these away, saves me from having to do two hours on the treadmill every day instead of just one.  Sigh.

You want the recipe?  Okay, okay.  Calm down.  Here it is.

Toffee Pecan Shortbread Cookies, adapted by Katrina Smith

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup powdered sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup pecans, finely chopped and every so slightly toasted

3/4 cup English toffee bits, such as Heath

1 oz. good quality chocolate, melted (optional) or add mini chocolate chips to the dough

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.  Set aside.

Cream the butter and powdered sugar together until smooth, 1-2 minutes.  Beat in the vanilla, then add the flour and salt just until combined.  Stir in the pecans, toffee (and chocolate chips, if adding). 

Form into small balls (1/2 oz. each) and place on baking sheet.  (They don’t spread too much, so you can do at least 20 per sheet.)  I flattened them slightly with a flat glass lightly coated with powdered sugar, but you don’t have to do that.

Bake until the edges are just starting to brown, 12 to 15 minutes.  (I baked mine 13:30 minutes.)  Cool on wire rack.  Melt chocolate in microwave safe glass dish in 15-20 second intervals, stirring in between each time, until smooth.  Dip half of cooled cookies in chocolate.  Set on waxed paper lined plate.  Cool until chocolate is hardened. (I got 43 half ounce cookies.)

You know you want some of these!  Oh and a very famous chef, Paige Vandegrift, (hehe) told me she likes to grind the pecans with the flour in a food processor to give them an even finer texture making them even more light and more tender and I can’t wait to try that sometime!