Recipe for chocolate chip sand tarts worth trying
May 3—In 2004, long before Angele Mueller opened Tallahatchie Gourmet restaurants in New Albany and Oxford, I featured her as a Cook of the Week.
At the time, Mueller was just starting a catering business, where she was known as The Tallahatchie Gourmet. She largely worked out of her home in New Albany, while raising three small children.
She freely shared her recipes, including ones for crawfish etouffee, poached mahi mahi, roasted vegetables and chocolate chip sand tarts.
Over the years, I've made all those delicious recipes — except for the chocolate chip cookies. But that changed last weekend.
I dusted off that recipe and went to work. The dough came together in less than 10 minutes. I baked one pan full (about 15 cookies) and rolled up the remaining dough into a cylinder and froze it for later use.
These don't taste like regular chocolate chip cookies. They're more like pecan sandies, using chocolate chips instead of chopped pecans.
The original recipe said to bake them for 10 minutes, but mine needed an extra five minutes to get the bottoms browned.
CHOCOLATE CHIP SAND TARTS
2 sticks butter, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 egg
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
In the bowl of a mixer, cream butter, sugar, vanilla extract, almond extract and egg. Add flour and salt and beat until well combined. Fold in chocolate chips.
Drop dough by tablespoons onto a parchment-paper lined baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees until edges are lightly browned, 10 to 15 minutes. Remove to a wire rack to cool.
