General Trick Blogger

By the way, here’s a tip I learned over lunch with Bay Area pastry chef Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater. Cream the butter first. Then add sugar and cream them together. This is the way it is supposed to be done. (Thanks Shuna!)

Butter Pecan Cookies Recipe

Ingredients

3/4 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/3 cup sugar, plus more for coating
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour

Method

1 Preheat oven to 350°. On a baking sheet, toast pecans until fragrant, about 6 minutes. Let cool completely; finely chop.

2 With an electric mixer, cream butter for about a minute. Add 1/3 cup sugar and cream until light, about 1 minute more. Beat in vanilla, salt, and flour, scraping down sides of bowl, just until dough comes together. Fold in pecans.

3 Separate dough into 12 pieces; squeeze dough to shape into balls. Roll in sugar. Place, 3 inches apart, on a baking sheet.

4 Gently flatten with the bottom of a glass (reshape sides if necessary). Sprinkle with sugar.

5 Bake until golden brown, rotating sheet halfway through, about 15 minutes. Sprinkle with more sugar. Cool cookies on a wire rack.

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Adapted from Everyday Foodmagazine.

Melon Salad with Chili and Mint Recipe

Prep time: 15 minutes Yield:

Experiment with different shapes for the diced melon, including using a melon baller if you have one. This melon salad holds up well in the fridge, but the mint should be added at service.

This recipe easily scales up.

Ingredients 4 cups of diced melon, honeydew, cantaloupe, or ambrosia melon, or a mixture,  about 1 large or 2 small melons 1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt, more or less to taste About 1/2 serrano chile, minced (taste the chile first to determine its heat, then add more or less to taste) 2 to 3 Tbsp lime juice or lemon juice 10 large fresh spearmint leaves

Method

1 Put the diced melon into a large bowl.  Sprinkle with salt and toss to combine. Add the lime or lemon juice and minced chili. Toss to combine. Chiles vary in their level of hotness, so start with a small amount (maybe 1 teaspoon minced), and add more to taste. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

2 When you are ready to serve, slice the mint leaves thin and gently combine with the diced melon. The easiest way to slice the mint is to chiffonade it: stack the mint leaves, roll them into a cigar shape and slice thin.

Hello! All photos and content are copyright protected. Please do not use our photos without prior written permission. If you wish to republish this recipe, please rewrite the recipe in your own unique words and link back to the source recipe here on Simply Recipes. Thank you!

Links:

Cucumber Melon Salad, from Not Eating Out in New York

Thai Melon Salad, from Viet World Kitchen