Pecan Dreams look & taste the part of the holiday season with their crunchy, nutty flavor and snowy, powdered sugar aesthetic.
- Pecan Dreams or Pecan Crescents are snowy cookies that must be on your Christmas cookie list this year.
- The trick to these holiday cookies is coating them in powdered sugar twice.
- Add chocolate chips or shape them into crescents to give them a spin this season!
- Ideal coffee pairing is a medium roast coffee with nutty and chocolatey flavors.
Pecan Dreams (or better known as Pecan Crescents!) are a classic cookie to add to your holiday cookie list. They are crisp, buttery cookies, laced with chopped pecans and coated in loads of powdered sugar.
This recipe has been tested and finely tweaked to recreate the Pecan Dreams of my late grandma. Her Pecan Dreams will always be the best, but these are a very close second — happy baking!
Place on the cookie sheet by the rounded teaspoon.
These cookies taste best as rounded cookies or blobs. The unevenness of the cookie allows the powdered sugar to easily penetrate all the textures of the cookie much better than if these were shaped into crescents.
When shaped into crescents, they tend to take on a more even surface that makes the powdered sugar more difficult to stick to.
Simple take a teaspoon of dough and plop it onto the cookie sheet. It may not seem like enough dough per cookie, but they will expand when baked.
Watch them so they don’t brown.
In making these cookies so many times, I’ve found that they need about 17 to 19 minutes in my oven as rounded teaspoon shapes. This is just enough time to keep them from browning, but also gives them the exact crunchy texture they are supposed to have.
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If you’ve never made them before, start watching them at the 15-minute mark to ensure they haven’t started to brown.
Use a 9 x 11 inch ceramic baking dish for the sugar coating step.
The best technique for coating the cookies in powdered sugar is to place ONLY 2 of the 3 cups of sugar in a 9 x 11 inch ceramic baking dish. Then, when the cookies have cooled for a minute or two (just enough so they don’t break when handling), put the cookies in the dish. Cover the tops of the cookies with the remaining cup of powdered sugar.
Move the powdered sugar around to fully cover the surface area of the cookie, making sure not to miss a spot.
Always double coat the cookies in powdered sugar.
This step is the secret to my grandma’s recipe — the double coat. After you’ve coated the cookies once in confectioner’s sugar, go ahead and repeat the process.
Again, make sure that the cookies are completely covered in powdered sugar. They should look white, not cream. If they are taking on a cream color, then there isn’t enough powdered sugar yet.
Add chocolate chips or shape them into crescents for a twist on this recipe.
For a spin on this recipe, you can add 1/2 cup of chocolate chips. As a chocolate lover, I save some of the dough to add chocolate chips to and the rest I keep as original Pecan Dreams.
To make these more presentable or to give as gifts, you can shape them into crescent moons. I did this last year and put them in individual bags with craft paper and real pieces of my Christmas tree. I added more powdered sugar to the bags to give the gifts a snowy look (and it gives the cookies that extra coating of powdered sugar!).
Pair these with a nutty medium roast coffee.
I happened to have Dean’s Beans Birdwatcher’s Blend on hand when I made these cookies, and it was the perfect pairing. These beans were also just roasted two days before I received them, which made this coffee even better.
The nuttiness and medium roast level complimented the pecans of this cookie so, so beautifully. If you would be so bold, definitely dunk these guys to soften the cookie slightly!
Pecan Dreams Cookie Recipe (Pecan Crescents)
Preheat oven to 325°F and place a sheet of parchment paper on a cookie sheet.
In a large bowl, cream butter and gradually add the 2/3 cup of powdered sugar and salt until light and fluffy.
Stir in the pecans and vanilla. Gradually add the flour, and mix well.
Drop dough by the rounded teaspoon onto the prepared cookie sheet. Bake for 17-20 minutes. Do not brown.
Let cookies cool for 1 to 2 minutes, then roll the cookies in a shallow bowl of powdered sugar. Then, repeat for an additional coating.
Ingredients
Directions
Preheat oven to 325°F and place a sheet of parchment paper on a cookie sheet.
In a large bowl, cream butter and gradually add the 2/3 cup of powdered sugar and salt until light and fluffy.
Stir in the pecans and vanilla. Gradually add the flour, and mix well.
Drop dough by the rounded teaspoon onto the prepared cookie sheet. Bake for 17-20 minutes. Do not brown.
Let cookies cool for 1 to 2 minutes, then roll the cookies in a shallow bowl of powdered sugar. Then, repeat for an additional coating.
Pair Coffee Like You Would Wine
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Very tasty! Goes great with coffee too.
Great to hear – thanks for sharing!
These look like White Mice, a shortbread cookie with walnuts. I like to make mine with almonds and almond extract (or Amaretto) instead of vanilla. Shape into little “mice”, put a sliver of almond in the top like mouse ears, bake, first coat immediately after removing from the oven, second after cooling. They are divine