Maple Syrup & Pecan Chocolate Stuffed Cookies

These cookies contain homemade pecan butter, along with maple syrup, and have a melted dark chocolate centre. They’re also studded with little pieces of lightly toasted pecans. Maple syrup packs a real punch of flavour, and the pecan butter and pieces really hold their own due to having their own strength of flavour too. So they end up balancing each other out quite well, with the dark chocolate centre bringing everything together with a rich, chocolate flavour. The pecan butter is simple and straightforward to make, you just lightly toast the nuts and then blend them until they’re smooth. You will however need a high speed blender to achieve this

Serves; Six Cook time; 10 minutes

You’ll need;

250g pecans
80g maple syrup
110g plain, all purpose flour
12 large dark chocolate buttons, the ones I used weighed 35g in total

Method;

Start by lightly toasting the pecans. Heat a dry frying pan over a medium heat, then toast the nuts for around five minutes. You’ll know when they begin to toast as they start to smell fragrant. Simply saying “they begin to smell nutty and toasted” feels too on the nose, but that is quite literally what they start to smell like. They begin to give off a wonderful toasty smell. Once they’re toasted, remove them from the frying pan and leave them in an even layer to cool to room temperature
Once the pecans have cooled, set aside 75g of the pecans, then put the remaining nuts into a blender. Blend them until you have a lovely smooth nut butter. Roughly chop the pecans you set aside, then add the pecan butter into a mixing bowl,the pecan butter should look like this
Into the pecan butter, add the maple syrup, flour and chopped pecans. Mix well until you have a dough, the blend of maple syrup and pecan will smell so delicious at this point
You should be able to roll all of the dough into one large ball. Then divide the dough evenly into six pieces. Roll each piece into a small ball, split the ball into equal halves, then pop two chocolate buttons between them. Smooth the dough back together until the halves have sealed the chocolate inside the cookie. Place them into a baking tray lined with baking paper. These cookies won’t spread as they bake, so you’ll need to shape them appropriately before baking them
Bake at 180°C/160°C fan assisted for 10 minutes. Once they’re baked, leave them to cool on the baking tray for five minutes before transferring them to a cooling tray. If you try to move them too soon they may fall apart