Chocolate Pecan Wafers

I'm back! Moving took much longer than I anticipated but I am finally settled. The new place is much closer to work! Yeah! Unfortunately the kitchen is much smaller. Boo..oh well!
A couple of weekends ago my family and I went to Yorktown to tour the replica of the Santa Maria and decided to stop at the local used bookstore. I found a 2 delightful 'new' cookbooks including Aunt Jenny's Favorite Recipes.  I decided to stick with something simple to start again, the chocolate pecan wafers.

Aunt Jenny was a character in a popular radio program in the 1940's that gave out housekeeping advice. All the recipes feature Spry, a brand of vegetable shortening. Shortening was still a fairly new product and so many cookbooks came out to promote this healthy alternative to lard.

 Spry makes everything better!

Starting with something simple in my small kitchen and I had all the ingredients.

 There is not a lot of flour in this cookie... Sadly I could not find Spry.

 Obligatory mixing photo. Yum! Shortening, sugar, and eggs!

 It looks much better with the chocolate added. Sorry the picture is kinda bad. I still have to figure out my kitchen lighting.

A whole tray of little turds. Ha ha ha

Aunt Jenny has special instructions on how to flatten your cookies.

 The only towel I could find had a pattern but it was a easy way to flatten them. I ended up only flattening half of the batch. I wanted to see how they were turn out un-flattened.

 I have missed the smell of baking!!

The flattened and un-flattened cookies turned out basically the same. Thin, crispy on the edges and chewy in the center. Delicious! A smaller batch than what I normally get out of an old recipe.

These were delicious! I would just skip the flattening part entirely next time. It was unnecessary and a bit annoying. Make sure you chop up the pecan nice and small.

My Rating: Keeper!

Friends and Family: Mixed reviews. "They are okay." "I love the texture. Crispy and chewy!" "Delicious"