Praline Experiments

This weekend I'm busy trying a few new things in between all of my standard baking. Since I needed to bake some pecan pralines anyway, I decided now would be a good time to experiment with a few ideas floating around in my head: butter pecan cookies and more shapely pecan pralines.

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Butter Pecan Cookies - Take 1

My idea for butter pecan cookies was to make a buttery shortbread cookie topped off with pecan praline. I used my robust sugar cookies as the base. These came out relatively well, but I only got a few cookies done before the praline got too cool and difficult to work with. They taste pretty good, but I'm not done perfecting this. I have another idea in store for the cookie part that will hopefully not only be delicious but less expensive in terms of ingredients.

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Shapely Pecan Pralines

Next up was making my pralines look a bit more appetizing. These things are SO decadent and delicious and melt-in-your-mouth-amazing, but the only photo I had of them made them look kind of... bleh. So I set out to make some pretty ones.

My vision was to make them in mini muffin tins, because I really like that shape. The first attempt was a failure... again, the stuff cooled too quickly for me to handle properly. My second attempt was better -- at least I got it all into the pan before it cooled off. But THEN I couldn't get them out of the tin without demolishing them. That's when I went out and bought a silicone baking mold. The result was MUCH better. Pretty shaped pralines!!

The only complaint I have is that the sides are dull, where they touched the mold. Not sure how to remedy that -- yet. Anyone have any ideas?