Savory Pecan Cookies Recipe (2024)

Can you freeze the cylinders before baking and make them later?

How much butter?

This is a wonderful idea, but flawed in the technique. The problem is the olive oil. When made according to the directions, the dough fell apart, even after a day in the fridge. In the oven, the cookies gave off the oil and took much longer than the prescribed time. With butter, it works very well, and a tablespoon or two of olive oil might be good for flavor.

I also used butter instead of oil. The conversion is 1/2 cup oil = 2/3 cup (5.34oz) butter. The dough was still a bit crumbly (I used 310g not cup measure) so added water.

Made this with chopped rosemary and walnuts, since that's what I had on hand and it was just great! Don't play around with proportions, too much, shortbread can be fickle. But use your choice of herb/s and nuts and discover which one you like best.

Following comments, I replaced the oil with 2/3 cup melted butter, and used rosemary and 3 oz walnuts chopped to 1/4 inch size. Rolled it between sheets of parchment paper. Cut with a scalloped cookie butter. Delicious and attractive!

Absolutely yes -- wrap well in plastic, getting out all the air. then put in a zipper bag and suck out the air from that (or, press it out.) ;-) But yes -- they freeze beautifully, if you need to prep before you decide to bake.

Can do in food processor. Use 2/3 cup butter and real Parmesan. Can roll out try walnuts and rosemary.

Very successful when made as follows: replace oil with 11 T cold. butter. Pulse flour, salt, pepper in food processor. Pulse sage. Add pecans and pulse. Add butter and pulse. Add eggs. Pulse. Add parm, pulse until dough comes together. No water required. Chill overnight. Slice and bake for 15 mins. Cool on baking pan for 5 mins and then cool on rack. Result is a nice crispy cookie w great flavor. Keep dough cold while filling pans--put filled pan in fridge while filling 2nd pan.

Tanis says the correct amount of flour for this recipe is 300 g. But the recipe hasn't been revised to reflect this. I used 310 g of a gluten free flour. The dough was very crumbly. Added water until it came to right consistency. People who try this recipe had better not be rank beginners. You'll have to make adjustments (because no flour is ever going to be measured in the exact same conditions) to get a good result. The "cookies," by the way, are delicious.

Patricia: RE your question as to why subbing butter for olive oil would call for more butter 'why the 1/2C of oil isn't 1/2C of butter': Olive oil is all fat. Butter has milk solids and water in addition to fat. Hence need to adjust. What I've read is typically 3:4 ratio - for 3 parts OO use 4 parts butter. I guess were I going to sub in this recipe, I might melt and clarify the butter first to remove milk solids, then use 1/2C to subs it straight across for the OO.

From Tanis: Found that 300 grams of flour was the correct weight for this recipe, but also found that the flour I was using weighed 150 grams/cup. Depending on moisture and other factors, like sifting or density of packing, 1 cup of flour may weigh anywhere from 120-160 grams, so it can be a mistake to rely on conversion charts that say 1 cup flour = 120 grams. In the case of this recipe, it would be fine to incorporate more flour if your dough seems too wet, or to add a bit of water if too dry.

Made these for Thanksgiving, baking them the week before and freezing the finished crackers until defrosting on the morning of the big day. The taste was good but baking was not simple: the slices completely fell apart during slicing and each slice had to be put together by hand. Also took much longer to bake, more like 20 minutes.

Referring back to the comments from others after taking the chilled dough out of the refrigerator and finding it too crumbly to work with, I decided to give it a few pulses in the food processor, which took care of any overly large chunks of pecan and also made it easier to add a little water to hold the dough together. It also took longer, as others have said, to bake them. Pretty good results. Perhaps more like a cracker than a cookie this way.

I used butter and dried sage. Also made with the fork-print method for ease after chilling for an hour. After baking, they tasted bland, so I sprinkled with some herb de provence and put back in the oven, now at 375. They browned nicely and taste wonderful, crisp at the edges.

I followed the recipe as written and added 2T of water. Even after freezeing the logs, as reported by others, they were too crumbly to cut in rounds, so I pressed them into a 9x12 sheet pan and scored them into squares using a bench scraper. They baked for about 35 minutes. I let them cool for 20 minutes, removed them from the pan and was able to cut them cleanly along the score lines. The sheet pan also trapped the oil as they cooked. It worked well, although I am not wild about the flavor.

Use butter instead of oil.

Following recommendations by others, I used 2/3 c of butter instead of olive oil. I also chopped the pecans less coarsely using a small food processor, which made the dough less lumpy and crumbly, and easier to slice. Mixed the dough with hands. The result was a nice shortbread cookie. I made thin slices which doubled the yield. Made half the batch without the sea salt sprinkle, which I preferred. Cookies went well with wine.

Made these with 150g butter and rosemary in the food processor. Where I really went rogue was not chilling & rolled into a 9x13 sheet pan on parchment with egg wash and salt. Baked for almost 40 minutes on 375F. I did score them but it didn't work very well. Taste was excellent - presentation not so much.

Made as written using scale to measure dry ingredients. Only change I will make next time is to chop the nuts more finely.No need for butter.

These are secretly addictive, though I think next time I'll add a touch more sage. Had no trouble with the dough once I'd read others comments - thanks! Baked at 375 for 10-12 min. Don't skip the egg wash and sprinkle of salt!

Good news, bad news. Good: followed Mystery Dancer's food processor method, substituted 2/3 c cold butter for oil. Fridge overnight, easy to cut and no crumbling. Bad: no flavor AT ALL! Very disappointed.

To solve the problem of slicing, I used a biscuit cutter (simply a small round “cookie” cutter) and pressed the dough inside the cutter. Came out perfect.

This recipe calls for rough chopped pecans. There is NO WAY this log can be sliced into 1/8” thick slices with rough chopped pecans in it, even after chilling overnight. 1/4” is fine, and is what should be written in the recipe.

I am baking these right now; they did not slice well so I had to reform and compress the slices. I often make a refrigerator cookie (sweet, with pecans and butter from a former Chez Panisse dessert chef that always comes out perfect). I now realize that evoo is not a good sub for butter in a sliced “cookie.” Next time I will use butter instead (and perhaps a bit of evoo). I love savory cookies so I am sorry this is not working out. Looking forward to some adjustments.

Others' comments show it's imperative to replace the oil with 2/3 c. butter, melted.

Better to squish dough together and then flatten, cut with cookie cutter, than trying to slice from the log. Making for dinner tonight with Helen and Warren, Steve and Dickson. September 11 20 year anniversary.

Followed recipe as written (with olive oil, no butter) and they came out well -- crispy, rich and savory -- and will be perfect with the co*cktails planned for this evening. They are hard to slice from a cylinder, though, as others have noted. I had better luck pressing the dough together and then flattening it (by hand and with a rolling pin) and using a biscuit/cookie cutter to make uniform cookies that held together well. Would definitely make again.

Followed the recommendations and substituted melted butter for olive oil; but definitely the other "hack" is to have more uniform, smaller pieces of pecans--when it comes to rolling the dough, too large pecan pieces will cause the roll to fall apart.