Pecan Sandies Recipe | Delicious Pecan Shortbread

Y’all, I am thrilled to bring you this recipe for pecan sandies. These little pecan shortbread cookies are just sweet enough, delightfully crumbly, and have a rich, deep butter pecan flavor.

I’ll tell you about a couple of ingredients that lend such depth of flavor, share some cookie-making tips along with some short video clips showing you what the crumbly dough should look like.

If you’re a crumbly cookie fan, and why wouldn’t you be, you may really like my Moroccan shortbread cookies or my caramel walnut shortbread. For ease of browsing, you can find all my cookie and bar cookie recipes in one place. Thank you so much for being here. Let’s get to it.

Watch my best pecan sandies recipe web story here.

These cookies have the perfect sandy texture and toasted pecan flavor. Highly recommend!

Reader Brandy

Pecan Sandies, At a Glance

✅Skill Level: Advanced Beginner
✅Skills: Toasting Nuts, Browning Butter, Grinding Nuts, The Creaming Method,
✅Type: Shaped Cookies
✅Number of Ingredients: 8
✅Prep Time: 15 minutes
✅Cook Time: 15 minutes
✅Yield: 40 cookies

Related Reading: How to Brown Butter

Jump Straight to the Recipe

Why Make This Recipe

If you love the unassuming pecan sandies cookies you can get from the store, then this recipe truly is a must-make.

My recipe uses brown butter rather than the oils the mass-produced ones use, so you know they’ll have great flavor.

They get even more flavor from a bit of brown sugar instead of all white sugar.

Toasting the pecans and chopping them very VERY finely ensures that you’ll have deep pecan flavor in every bite.

Keeping the liquid to the bare minimum results in perfectly sandy cookies that are crumbly and crunchy, as a good pecan sandy should be.

And last, giving the portioned dough a light roll in granulated sugar gives just a touch of added sweetness, crumble, and crunch.

They really are the perfect little cookies to munch with a cup of tea or coffee.

If you’re ready to bake, feel free to head to the recipe.

Ingredients and Substitutions

There are no hard-to-find ingredients in this cookie recipe.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• butter: I call for both brown butter that has been cooled to a solid state and a little bit of whole butter. Since whole butter is 80-ish% fat and 20-ish% water and milk solids, the only liquid in the recipe is the small amount of water in the butter, so don’t leave it out. If you want to use all whole butter, the flavor will not be as deep, and the cookies won’t be as crumbly since they’ll get more water from the butter
• dry milk powder: I add this to the butter when browning it. It adds extra browned butter flavor. It is an optional ingredient, and if you don’t have dried milk powder, your cookies will still be very, very tasty.
• sugar: For sweetness, moisture, and browning. There’s granulated sugar in the recipe and the cookies get rolled in more granulated sugar before baking
• brown sugar: For a touch more sweetness and a little more depth of flavor thanks to the molasses in the brown sugar. I use dark brown, but light brown will work as well
• salt: Salt brings out the flavor in the toasted nuts and snaps all the flavors into focus. Don’t leave it out.
• vanilla: Rounds out flavors and brings some floral notes to the cookies. It’s not strictly necessary, but I like to add just a bit
• pecans: I toast and then chop the nuts very finely. So finely that lots of the pecans turn to dust and no pieces are larger than a very small pea. Chopped finely, you make sure that you get pecan flavor in every bite as the “dust” is basically pecan flour that will mix in with the dough completely. The nuts bring a sweet-toasty dimension to the cookie as well as more fat for a super-tender result. You can substitute any other type of nut that you prefer as long as you chop them up very fine.
• all-purpose flour: Since there is so little water in these cookies, I don’t recommend substituting for cake flour–they may fall apart completely. Nor do I think bread flour is a good sub here since it is a thirstier flour than all-purpose. Stick with AP here
• baking soda: The baking soda adds just a bit of leavening, but more importantly, it enhances the flavors and allows the cookies to set up more quickly for a crunchier, crumblier texture

Procedure

These cookies are made using The Creaming Method. The dough comes together very quickly.

1. Chop the pecans super finely or pulse them in a food processor until very finely chopped. Set aside.
2. Cream the brown butter and butter together until creamy.
3. Add the sugar, brown sugar, salt, and vanilla and cream until nice and smooth.
4. Whisk the baking soda into the flour and then mix in on low speed.
5. Add the nuts and mix until the pecans are evenly distributed and no dry flour remains. Scrape the bowl as necessary.

NOTE: Dough will be very crumbly and may not hold together at all. That’s okay.

Once you have your dough made, scrape it out onto some plastic wrap, wrap it up and press it together well.

Refrigerate for an hour or two so the flour can completely hydrate and the flavors can blend together.

Once the dough has rested for awhile, portion it out, roll it into balls, roll in sugar, place on parchment-lined cookie sheets fairly close together, and press them down a bit with the bottom of a glass dipped into sugar.

Bake them, let them cool completely on the cookie sheets, and you’ve got tasty, crumbly, butter pecan cookies or pecan sandies.

Whatever you want to call them, you will love eating them!

If you’re ready to bake, feel free to jump straight to the recipe. Otherwise, read on for some equipment recommendations, variations, and video clips to show what the dough should look like.

Visual How-To

Here are some video clips so you can get an idea of what the dough should look like at different stages. I hope you find them helpful!

Here’s the dough as you add the pecans. You can see how crumbly it is:

This is what the dough looks like poured out onto plastic wrap before resting in the fridge. I’m not kidding when I say it’s crumbly!

Here’s the pecan shortbread dough just a few seconds later after wrapping it up and pressing it together. At this point, refrigerate it for an hour or two.

Here is the dough before baking, all portioned out, rolled in sugar, and somewhat flattened with the bottom of a glass.

NOTE: Before baking, I pressed them just a bit flatter than this.

Equipment Recommendations

You don’t necessarily need a stand mixer to make these cookies. You can mix up the dough with a good hand mixer or even with a wooden spoon in a bowl if you are patient and have strong arms.

A good, sharp chef knife makes short work of the pecans, and as I mentioned earlier, you can also pulse them in a food processor.

I bake on rimmed baking sheets, and if I need a rimless sheet, I just turn them upside down and bake on the back!

Last, lining the pans with parchment is my preferred method of preparing the pans for baking cookies.

The pre-cut sheets are the perfect size to fit on half-sheet pans.

Variations

Instead of making individually portioned cookies, you can roll the dough into a round that’s about 9-10″ in diameter and roll sugar into it with a rolling pin.

Bake as a whole shortbread and cut into wedges while still warm.

Another option is to make them into slice-and-bake cookies. Roll the dough into a log about 1 1/2″ in diameter, roll the outside of the log in granulated sugar, and then slice them into 1/3″ slices.

Tips for Success

Know that the dough is very crumbly, so please resist the urge to add a little water or milk. This will throw the texture of the cookies off and make you sad.

Even after refrigerating the dough, it will still be a little crumbly, so make sure to firmly press the dough into the shape you want so it will hold together.

Once out of the oven, the cookies are too delicate to move, so let them cool completely (or at least mostly) on the baking sheets before transferring to a cooling rack or to container.

Pecan Sandies Q & A

Serving Suggestions

These unassuming little butter pecan cookies are perfect to enjoy with a cup of tea or with coffee.

But they’d also be tasty if you crush them and mix them into butter pecan ice cream, butterscotch ice cream, or French vanilla ice cream.

Make sandwich cookies by sticking two together with some raspberry jam, mixed berry jam, or maybe some Nutella.

Fancy them up a little bit by drizzling the cookies with fine lines of ganache, or dip them halfway into coating chocolate.

More Cookies Made with Brown Butter

If you love the nuttiness that brown butter brings to any recipe you use it in, you may like my peanut butter cookies or my brown butter toffee chocolate chip cookies.

Both use brown butter to elevate a cookie jar staple to new heights.

Questions?

If you have any questions about this post or recipe, I am happy to help.

Simply leave a comment here and I will get back to you soon. I also invite you to ask question in my Facebook group, Fearless Kitchen Fun.

If your question is more pressing, please feel free to email me. I should be back in touch ASAP, as long as I’m not asleep.

A Note About Measurements

My recipes are almost all written by weight, including liquids, unless otherwise specified.

For accuracy and consistency of results, I encourage you to buy–and use–a kitchen scale.

I promise that baking and cleanup will be so much quicker and easier.

This is the scale that I recommend for home use. I have owned and used one for years.

Love These Cookies? Please Rate and Review. It Really Helps!

Watch my brown butter pecan recipe web story here.

Thanks for spending some time with me today friends.

Enjoy the pecan sandies!

Take care, y’all.