Jean's Chewy Maple Cookies

Left side, cut with pizza cutter! Right side, recipe working much better.

My good friend Jean shared her recipe yesterday for Chewy Maple Cookies -- yumm! Baking them today, I used the "very strong dark" maple syrup that Goodrich's Maple Farm in Cabot, Vermont, provides for cooks. I also tried substituting whole wheat flour for part of the white flour in the original recipe -- not a success at first, as the whole wheat flour didn't absorb the liquid, and the cookies spread into a sheet of cooked dough on the (parchment-lined) pan. A few quick strokes with the pizza cutter turned things back into snack form, but I still wanted the cookie shape, so with the other half of the dough I raised the amount of flour.

Here's my final "revised" version -- and Jean, thank you very much!

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.

Stir together:
1-1/2 (one and one half) cups unbleached flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
dash salt
1 cup finely chopped walnuts (I put the regular chopped ones in a small plastic bag and run the rolling pin over them a couple of times to make them finer)

In a large bowl, beat with hand mixer:
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup dark maple syrup (if you can't get dark, use light but add Jean's extra ingredient: 1/2 tsp maple flavoring)

Stir in dry ingredients. Drop dough by generous teaspoonfuls onto parchment-lined or greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for 12 minutes. Makes about 4 dozen.

Maple Pecan Pie

Sugaring season is close to the end around here (northeastern Vermont) -- one local family said today they had made 35 gallons of maple syrup from their home sugarbush and sugarhouse (35 times 40 = 1400 gallons of sap to do that!). They'll be washing out their buckets tomorrow.

And tomorrow I'll be meeting readers and selling my Vermont mysteries at the St. Albans (Vermont) Maple Festival, so I'm getting in the mood for the sweet celebration! Here's my best maple pecan pie recipe; it has some "pauses" in the process, so watch the timing if you're in a rush.

Heat and boil for 1 minutes, then let cool to lukewarm (ideal to place out on a chilly back porch!):
3/4 cup maple syrup
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup

Make a single-crust pie dough recipe, roll out, and fit into the pan; put it in the freezer for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Whip eggs, whisking in the lukewarm syrup mixture, vanilla, and salt and then stirring in the pecans:
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1-1/2 (one and one half) cups pecan halves

Fill pie shell with mixture. Bake at 350, placed low in the oven, for 55 minutes. Cool before serving.