23 years of procrastination

Old habits die hard, really, really hard. To wit, it took me something like 23 years to make the pecan pillow recipe I clipped from Seventeen magazine way back when I was learning to cook. Then it took me another week to post about it.

To be honest, it was a very busy week and I've been so exhausted I didn't watch any of the Red Sox's first two playoff games, and therefore I blame myself for both losses. (Again, old habits die hard -- 23 years of baseball-watching superstition are not wiped out even by two World Series wins in the last six years.)

At any rate, last week I hauled out the Seventeen magazine album of recipes and makeup tips (for a glamorous look, try frosted vanilla eyeshadow with electric blue mascara!) and turned to the pecan pillows recipe. It is, as so many of the teen magazine recipes were back then, ridiculously easy. It also relies on convenient packaged crescent roll dough.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. The first step is to take 2 cups of pecans and chop them in the food processor. This explains the first 10 years or so I didn't make this recipe: I didn't have a food processor until some time after I got married.

Then you throw in 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and blend until smooth. This step used up the last of my Cassia cinnamon, which pretty much negated any more baking until the replacement order arrived.

The next step told me shopping has changed in 23 years. At this point, I was supposed to crack open two cans of crescent roll dough -- got that -- and separate them into eight rectangles, which meant pinching two triangles of dough together along the hypotenuse sides. This was not difficult. There should be eight triangles in a can, or four rectangles.  However, the cans of dough I bought made six "large and buttery" crescents each, meaning three rectangles per can. Either I wasn't paying attention when I was shopping and bought the wrong version, or the crescent roll company completely changed the product.

No matter, it was still (kinda large) rectangles of crescent dough waiting to be filled. The recipe said to use 2 tablespoons of pecan butter filling; I adjusted to 2 1/2. I placed the filling in the center of the dough rectangles, and then folded the corners of the dough over the filling. These didn't look like neat little pillows, more like dim sum gone rogue, but as long as all the sides were pinched closed and nothing was going to leak out, I didn't care.

At this point, I was supposed to quickly brush the pillows with an egg wash. I skipped this step (read, forgot) and just put them on a baking sheet and popped them in the oven for 18 minutes.

VERDICT: These were surprisingly good. They were the sort of thing that makes you drink your milk because they go so well together. Keith and Alex loved them. I don't know that they were worth waiting 23 years to make them, but they were very tasty, and a nice quick dessert/breakfast treat. A keeper.