Kardea Brown’s butter pecan cookies don’t require pecans, strictly speaking. In the spirit of her new cookbook, Make Do with What You Have, this recipe calls for staple ingredients—brown sugar, butter, flour, and any type of nut. “If you don’t have pecans, you can switch it out for whatever nut you have on hand,” Brown explains. “I find that peanuts work really well in this, too.”
Flexibility is key for the busy Brown, especially during the holidays. The Charleston native recently won two Emmys—one for Outstanding Culinary Instructional Series and another for Outstanding Culinary Host—for her Food Network show Delicious Miss Brown. This past May, she opened her first restaurant, Kardea Brown’s Southern Kitchen, inside Charleston International Airport. And her second cookbook hit shelves in November.
“I’m more of a savory cook,” Brown admits. “I love my desserts, but I tend to spend more time preparing the protein and the sides, and sometimes desserts become an afterthought.”
Fortunately, these simple but crowd-pleasing cookies are afterthought-appropriate. They come from Brown’s grandmother, who also isn’t a big baker, she says. “So whenever she made the cookies, it was something very special.”
To stretch the recipe a little further, Brown suggests rolling the dough into a log and then slicing it into discs instead of shaping the cookies by hand. This will make for more even distribution and smaller cookies.
