Sometimes being part of the military means you can’t always visit family for the holidays.  But it also means you have family wherever you happen to be.  Thus, we celebrate Thanksgiving with other military families almost every year.  We can gather with friends, fry up a couple of turkeys, and everyone contributes one or two dishes.  It certainly beats cooking every part of the meal, and it’s definitely better than our Pizza Hut Easter tradition.

Ahem.

My contribution this year was a combination of 2 recipes:  Pecan Pie Tarts and Whiskey Maple Cream Sauce.  The tarts were delicious and bite-sized, and they tasted even better with this rich, creamy sauce drizzled over the top.

Since the sauce is supposed to be chilled, I started with that and made it the night before.

You will need:

• 1 1/2 cups of heavy cream
• 5 tablespoons of pure maple syrup
• 3 tablespoons of light corn syrup
• 1 tablespoon of whiskey

Easy peasy!

1.  In a sauce pan over medium-low heat, combine the first 3 ingredients and stir them constantly for about 20 minutes.  The mixture will bubble and thicken.

2.  Remove from heat, add the whiskey, and then put the pot back on the heat for another 5 minutes or so.

3.  Put in the fridge overnight to chill and thicken.  Doesn’t get much easier than that!

Now for the Pecan Pie Tarts.  I doubled the original recipe and used a bit more cream cheese than called for because I wanted to use the entire brick.

To make about 40 tarts the way I did, you will need:

• 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups packed dark brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/3 cups chopped pecans

1.  Beat together the softened cream cheese and butter until creamy.  Then add the flour and salt, and mix until it forms a dough.  I used my hands for this part.

Cover the dough and chill in the fridge for about an hour.

2.  While the dough is chilling, mix the eggs, dark brown sugar, melted butter and vanilla extract together in a bowl.

I cannot tell you how much I miss my broken low-light camera lens right now.

3.  Chop up the pecans (even smaller if they came pre-chopped), and mix those in as well.

4.  Now comes the fun part.  Okay, it’s tedious.  Very, very tedious.  But it’s worth it, I promise!  Preheat your oven to 325-degrees F.  Grease 2 mini muffin tins (this will make about 40 tarts) and press the dough into the bottoms and sides of the greased cups.  Then fill each one with the pecan mixture to just below the edge (these will rise a bit, so don’t fill right to the brim).

5.  Then bake these puppies at 325-degrees for 25-30 minutes.  Cool them in the pan on a wire rack, and then pop them on out.  They should come out fairly easily if you greased the pan well.  When you’re ready to serve them, drizzle them with some of the chilled whiskey cream sauce.

Wow.  This sauce puts these things way over the top on level of divine, splurging deliciousness.  WowWowWow.

Now I realize this is decidedly Thanksgiving-y-ish food, but I could definitely see this whiskey cream sauce making a comeback around Christmas.  Even if I have to pour it over my sugar cookies.  Even if I just have to drink a bowl of it for breakfast.

Would that be bad?

Or bad in a good way?