These butter pecan cookies are bursting with creamy butterscotch flavor, glazed with a sweet and crunchy pecan topping for the ultimate buttery bite! These pecan cookies look great on a holiday cookie platter, and they’re so easy to make.
I love butter pecan ice cream (not to mention, pecan pie), and I’ll use any excuse to incorporate those buttery, nutty flavors into an easy cookie recipe! Try my pecan praline cookies and these easy pecan pie bars, next.
Butter Pecan has to be one of my all-time favorite ice cream flavors. When I set out to translate that flavor into a cookie, I knew I needed to nail it. Let’s just say: Mission accomplished! These glazed butter pecan cookies are buttery, melt-in-your-mouth cookies filled with butterscotch chips and topped with a sweet vanilla glaze bursting with crunchy chopped pecans. Here’s why they’re the best holiday cookie:
- Brimming with buttery flavor. My secret to flavor-filled butter pecan cookies? Blending the butterscotch chips! It packs every bite with sweet butterscotch bits and all the flavor that comes with them.
- Easy to make. I use my simple shortbread cookie dough, add in some rich and creamy butterscotch, and then finish these cookies with an easy vanilla glaze and crispy pecans. They’re fresh from the oven in 30 minutes!
- Lots of pecan crunch. Chopped pecans add just the right amount of satisfying crunch to the topping. Combined with the buttery cookies underneath, it makes this recipe totally irresistible.
What Flavor is Butter Pecan?
Butter pecan flavor combines roasted pecans, butter, and vanilla. In the case of butter pecan ice cream, it’s a buttery vanilla ice cream with chunks of chopped pecans throughout. The ice cream is creamy, sweet, and a little crunchy. That’s exactly what I was after with this butter pecan cookies recipe!
What You’ll Need
My glazed butter pecan cookies are essentially a 5-ingredient cookie beneath a creamy, nutty glaze. Like the cookie itself, the ingredients list is short and sweet (shortbread, get it?). Be sure to check out the printable ingredients list further down in the recipe card.
- Butterscotch Chips – You’ll find these in the baking aisle of most grocery stores. Butterscotch chips are the key to the extra rich, buttery flavor of these butter pecan cookies, but you’ll need to pulverize them first! Stay with me, here – we’ll get into this shortly.
- Butter – Get your butter to room temperature before you start.
- Powdered Sugar – Also called confectioner’s sugar, using powdered sugar yields a less dense cookie (see below). You’ll need it for the cookies as well as the sweet glaze.
- Flour and Salt
- Vanilla Extract and Milk – You’ll combine vanilla and milk with powdered sugar for the glaze. Whole milk or 2% milk is best for a creamy consistency.
- Pecans – Chop the pecans up finely to add to the glaze, to put some “pecan” in your butter pecan cookies!
What Does Powdered Sugar Do in Cookies?
Compared to granulated sugar, powdered sugar absorbs more moisture in the cookie dough, and leads to a lighter, more tender cookie. It’s the secret to the melt-in-your-mouth texture in my lemon meltaway cookies and these festive orange cranberry meltaway cookies. I highly recommend it!
This recipe is so easy and these cookies come out filled with the utmost butterscotch flavor. As promised, I’ll get right into my secret for the BEST butter pecan cookies…
- Blend the butterscotch chips. If that sounds a little weird, trust me. It works! Add the butterscotch chips to a blender and pulse them until you reach a coarse powder. This magic dust is going to bring all sorts of melty, delicious, butterscotch flavors to your butter pecan cookies.
- Prepare the cookie dough. Beat together the butter, powdered sugar, and salt. Next, mix in the butterscotch dust. Then, slowly mix in the flour until you’re left with dry dough.
- Portion out the cookies. Scoop the cookie dough and roll it into balls, and place these onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. The cookies will spread a bit as they bake, so be sure to leave a couple of inches between your dough balls.
- Bake. Pop the cookies into a 350ºF oven for about 20 minutes, until they’re golden around the edges. Then take them out and transfer the cookies to a wire rack. You can glaze the cookies warm or cool, just know the warmer they are, the runnier the glaze will be.
- Add the glaze. Whisk together a glaze of powdered sugar, vanilla, milk, and chopped pecans. Drop a spoonful of glaze onto the top of each cookie, and leave it to set.
Tips and Variations
- Measure the ingredients correctly. Make sure to spoon the flour into your measuring cup and then level it off, rather than using the cup to scoop the flour directly from the bag. This way you’re less likely to add too much flour to the recipe, which produces a denser cookie.
- Don’t overmix. Only mix the ingredients until they’re just combined. Over-mixing can lead to tough, chewy cookies.
- You don’t HAVE to blend the butterscotch chips. If you don’t have a blender, or if you’d prefer to leave the butterscotch chips whole, you can skip this part. Note that the texture of the cookies will be a little different, but they’ll still be tasty!
- Not a fan of butterscotch? You can still make a variation of these butter pecan cookies by blending up white chocolate chips to add instead.
- I prefer to glaze my cookies when they’re cool. This is a personal preference, but I like that the glaze doesn’t melt and thin out as much.
- Add a pinch of cinnamon to the glaze for a bit of extra warmth and spice.
- At room temperature. These glazed butter pecan cookies can be stored airtight at room temperature for up to 3 days. If you’re layering them in a container, use parchment paper to separate the layers. You can also keep these cookies in the fridge, just remember to take them out about 10-15 minutes before serving to take the chill off.
- Freeze. I recommend freezing these pecan cookies before adding the glaze. Once the baked cookies have cooled completely, transfer them to a freezer bag or freezer-safe container. Store the cookies frozen for up to 3 months, then thaw them in the fridge and prepare a quick glaze when you’re ready to eat them.
- Browned Butter Bourbon Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Salted Toffee Cashew Cookies
- Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies
- Chewy Pecan Supreme Cookies
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 30 cookies 1x
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
Description
These butter pecan cookies are bursting with butterscotch chips and topped with a sweet vanilla glaze and crunchy pecans, for the ultimate melt-in-your-mouth, buttery bite!
Ingredients
- 3/4 cups butterscotch chips
- 3/4 cup butter, room temperature
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
Glaze
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 tablespoons milk
- 1/2 cup finely chopped pecans
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325F°. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- Place the butterscotch chips in a blender and pulverize them to a coarse powder. Set them aside.
- In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment beat the butter, powdered sugar, and salt together until smooth, 1-2 minutes. Add in the blended butterscotch chips and mix until incorporated.
- Turn the mixer to low and add in the flour until combined. The mixture will be dry.
- Scoop 1 tablespoon of the dough out and roll it into a ball. Place on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with all the dough, spacing the balls about 1 1/2 inches apart.
- Bake the cookies for 17-20 minutes until lightly golden at the edges.
- Remove from the oven and transfer them to a wire rack to cool.
Glaze
- Mix the powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk together with a whisk.
- Add in the pecans. Top each cookie with about 1 tablespoon of the glaze.
- Allow the glaze to set up before serving.
Notes
- You can glaze the cookies warm or cool. I like to glaze them when they are completely cooled because the glaze won’t melt off as much. If you glaze them warm you will have a much thinner glaze on the cookie.
I’m not a good or experienced cookie maker, probably because I have always had anaphylaxis from eggs. I made these but I accidentally made 20 bigger ones instead of 30 smaller ones, used whole butterscotch morsels, used brown rice flour instead of wheat, and did not glaze them. They were fantastic anyway!!! Thanks for the eggless recipe!
Hi! I tried making these twice and while the recipe for the cookie itself is great, the measurements for the glaze listed just don’t seem right. The powdered sugar measurements seem a bit excessive. When I mix in the milk and vanilla based on the measurements listed, the consistency seems more like a dough than a glaze. I have to add a considerable amount of milk in order to get the consistency closer to a glaze, and even then it turns into more of a frosting than anything that actually melts onto the cookie. On top of that, I wind up having so much leftover glaze. Seems like there should be less powdered sugar in this, no?
Sorry, don’t mean to come off so negative or anything, as I do use a lot of your recipes and they’re great! I’m still just having some trouble getting this one down.
Didn’t give 5 stars because my batch came out hard. But they were extremely tasty. I will try again!
Can these be frozen?
I made these and they are delicious! I have a love/hate thing with butterscotch chips; like I’ll be craving them and think they’re the best thing ever and just eat them until I never want to see another butterscotch anything again. These are nice and small, and the recipe doesn’t make too many, so hopefully I will avoid that tragedy.
I will say (not to be one of those idiots who makes a million substitutions and then complains that the recipe was bad) that I only had a cup of all-purpose flour left, and given the choice of whole wheat and cake flour, I went with the cake flour. I think it was the right choice, because although the cookie spread a bit more than the little morsels pictured, it was still tender and melt-in-your-mouth yummy. And in case anyone’s wondering, you can also pulverize the chips in a food processor. What a great recipe to have on hand when you’re tired of chocolate chip, or missing some eggs, or just want some cookies relatively quickly.
OMG…. I couldn’t resist any longer, because, butter pecan ice cream is absolutely my favorite. I was a little hesitant as the recipe does not call for eggs, but, I took the leap and whipped up the cookies on yesterday. I followed the recipe to the letter, and let me tell you, they are amazing. Thank you for sharing with your followers….
Awesome!! Thank you for the feedback!