This is one of the recipes Laura makes every Christmas holiday season, mostly to give away as gifts. The filling is like pecan pie; the cream cheese dough is soft and luscious, and it’s difficult not to eat the whole batch before it’s packed up to give away.

• 3 ounces cream cheese
• ½ cup butter, slightly softened
• 1 cup flour
• 1 egg
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon butter, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• Dash salt
• About ¾ cup coarsely broken pecan pieces

Cream together cream cheese, 1/2 cup butter and flour; chill dough for 1 hour or more. Shape into 24 1-inch balls, and place in ungreased mini muffin tins. Press the dough evenly against the bottoms and sides of the cups.*

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Beat together egg, brown sugar, 1 tablespoon of butter, vanilla and salt until smooth. Divide pecans in half. Fill pastry cups with half the pecans; then dollop the sugar mixture over the nuts. Top with remaining nuts. (If you want to just mix the sugar mixture with the nuts and fill the cups all at once, we won’t be in the least troubled.)

Bake at 325 degrees for 25 minutes or until filling is set. Cool before removing from muffin tins.

*We have a couple of wooden push tools that look sort of like barbells or pestles, with different-sized balls on each end that make it much easier to press dough into mini tins. Some stores call them “tart tampers.” We’ve seen them occasionally at Crate & Barrel, and once or twice at the local hardware store. Even if we only use them a couple of times a year, it’s one of those tools that we’re willing to make space for because it makes the task so much faster.