Feeling stressed? Well I was feeling a bit stressed earlier this week so, finding myself home alone, I decided to bake these delicious Pecan Cookies.  Not the way I normally bake though which usually means throwing something together at the same time as cooking the dinner and while I am quite an organised person I can be very a messy cook !

So on my kitchen counter there would be bowls, wooden spoons, a weighing scales, ingredients, mobile phone, post, cookbook ….you get the picture! Not ideal and so often leads to those baking disasters where an ingredient is forgotten or added twice.

So I cleared the counter of anything that wasn’t related to the cookies, measured out all my ingredients and even got my baking trays ready. For the next half  hour all I had to think of was mixing the soft cookie dough, totally satisfying and relaxing.

The cookies took only 10 minutes to make and another 10 minutes to bake so nothing more to do other than put the kettle on.  Try it, pick an easy recipe like this one and savour the process! 

Time: 10 minutes to make & 10/12 minutes to bake

Makes 18

Ingredients

115g / 4oz butter, softened

115g / 4oz self-raising flour

85g / 3oz pecan nuts

85g / 3oz light muscovado sugar

1 large egg yolk

2 tbsp maple syrup

How to make them…..

• Preheat oven to 190° C / 375° F / Gas Mark 5
• Lightly grease 2 baking trays or use 2 silicone baking sheets
• Reserve 18 pecan halves & roughly chop the rest
• Put the butter, sugar and maple syrup in a bowl
• Beat with a wooden spoon until light & fluffy
• Beat in the egg yolk
• Sift the flour over the mixture, add the chopped pecans and mix to a stiff dough
• Place 18 spoonfuls* of the mixture onto the baking sheets, spaced well apart
• Top each with a pecan half, pressing down gently
• Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes until light golden brown.
• Leave the cookies on the baking tray for 10 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack

*if you want to be really precise the amount of dough for each cookie should weigh approx. 20g