Buttered Pecan Skillet Cookie with Guava Cream Cheese Frosting

A tribute to my favorite ice cream flavor via nostalgia and the excitement of exploring new flavors found in familiar settings. It’s a cookie cake!

Hey everyone!

This post is a little behind schedule, I hope you’ll forgive me.

This past week I was working on the largest cake i’ve ever been hired to make, which also happened to be the very first wedding cake i’ve made. The finished cake fed over 175 guests at a wedding in upstate New York. The couple wanted the flavors to embody the ingredients and colors used in traditional Chinese medicine. Most of these ingredients weren’t totally new to me but I had never used some of them in baking and especially so many at one time. I worked at home every night after work for seven nights to bake the cake layers and to make the various fillings, curds, frostings, and decorations.

I learned SO MUCH through making and assembling this cake. Beyond just the new recipes developed along the way and the lessons of transporting and assembling the cake on site, I learned how to navigate the business/financial side of a project this size in the future. As someone who is still new to freelance work in New York City and generally uncomfortable with money, I tend to undercharge for my labor. It’s a bad bad habit that i’m trying to break and one that i’ve gained considerable confidence in addressing by talking to colleagues who work in the same industry. If I can offer one piece of advice, It’s to find someone you can talk to about money. Someone who has walked your path and knows what it’s like to struggle with asking to be paid fairly.

Maybe someday i’ll write an entire post about navigating the financial waters that surround freelance work. I’m no expert but I would love to interview some friends and fellow bakers who are. Stay tuned!

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Today’s recipe is inspired by my trip down south that I wrote about in this previous post. It’s a great example of how my mind works - collecting and combining inspirations, playing with nostalgia while introducing a “new” ingredient or technique to keep things exciting. A look forward while looking back..

When I travel to see my parents I always make a point to do two things. To relive or experience something I miss from my home-state and to expose my parents to something new. Reliving my adolescence in Alabama usually involves a meal at Waffle House, a late night drive past some nostalgic personal landmark, or a trip to the mall.

The city I grew up in has one big indoor mall that kind of anchors most of the economic activity of the region. Folks would drive in from an hour or more away just to have access to the J.C. Penny, Dillards, or Toys R Us that they lacked in their smaller towns. The mall was about a 30 minute drive from our own house, which was further out in the country. As soon as I turned 16 and had my license, I was there at least two or three times a week to get the latest CDs and DVDs from F.Y.E. and Circuit City or the latest emo band tee from Hot Topic or Journey’s. But besides all that, the main reason to go to the mall was just to go. It was an escape from sitting at home. It was a flashy overstimulation of modern access and excess that beat out sitting on the front porch watching the tractors plow row after row of the peanut field next door.

A trip to the mall was rarely complete without a stroll through the food court. Not only to grab food but to check and see if you recognized anyone from school. The food court was the meeting spot for gangs of teenagers who would pull together tables and chairs to waste away an hour or two between laps around the stores. These hangouts were fueled by Taco Bell, Chik Fil A, or a slice or two from Sbarro’s. And, if you had the change left in your pockets, a cookie from Great American Cookies.

Great American Cookies not only specialized in cookies but also cookie sandwiches and cookie cakes. The cookie cakes always caught my eye for their ginormous size (up to 20” across) and their bright primary colored frosting. You could smell them from across the mall and when you approached they glowed in a sugary halo behind their plexiglass cases. I don’t remember if I ever actually had a Great American Cookie cake for my birthday but the allure was strong and I remember thinking about them often. It would be much later when I shared childhood stories with friends in college that I came to realize how cookie cutter my retail utopia had been.

These days the mall isn’t doing so well. Like so many malls and shopping centers across the US, economic factors and consumer spending habits have created carcasses out of these hives once humming with bored teenagers. While on my trip, everyone from my parents to an old high school friend shared stories about visiting the mall recently only to discover another handful of stores had closed for good. I was relieved to learn that Great American Cookies had survived the latest round of closures but who knows what the future holds for these strongholds of childhood nostalgia. 🍪

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In my homage to the giant cookie cakes found at Great American Cookies I chose to incorporate another reminder of home, Buttered Pecan ice cream from Blue Bell Creamery. If you’ve ever traveled the ice cream isle of any self-respecting grocery store in the south, you would have come across this iconic brand. Buttered Pecan has always been my family’s favorite and we almost always had a gallon of it (yes, a gallon) in the freezer. Just one scoop and I’m brought back to so many memories.

I was also inspired by a meal I shared with my mom on the way home from the airport. We were hungry and in a hurry but I wanted to opt for a local spot rather than a chain restaurant. I found a Salvadorian spot that served fresh pupusas and tamales - which were delicious. They also had a pastry case filled with fresh baked goods, several of which included guava as a filling. I was familiar with Salvadorian food from living in SF and visiting the Mission often with friends but the cuisine was new to my mom. I was happy to share a new experience with her and to see her select a few pastries for the road, including a guava and cheese turnover.

Incorporating guava into a buttered pecan cookie might seem odd but it works wonderfully as the tart fruit counters and balances the richness of the butter and pecans. Combining memories and the tastes of past experiences are the starting point for so many culinary expressions and I’m happy I could bring together these elements to create a really delicious recipe representing past and present.

A few notes…

• The ice cream’s buttered pecan flavor is *so* buttery and unique that it’s hard to explain. I know there are some “natural” and artificial flavor extracts and enhancers going on. I decided to utilize brown butter and a little miso paste to recreate the complex tasting notes in the ice cream.

• Ive dialed back to sweetness in this cookie cake to account for the frosting. If you’re not making the frosting, a sprinkle of coarse sugar before baking would be very nice!

• Guava paste can be found in small tubs or plastic pouches in many Latin or Caribbean grocery stores. Its tartness and color vary by brand.

• If you don’t have a 9 inch cast iron pan, this cookie will bake just fine in a 9 inch cake pan. The cookie might bake a littler faster in a pan so start checking after 20 minutes.

Buttered Pecan Cookie Cake with Guava Cream Cheese Frosting

makes one 9 inch cookie cake