Pie D'oh to Plan B Cookies, Sweet-Tweaked

Initially, I started out with a rolled, refrigerated pie crust, which I had intended to use in my MayDay lemon meringue pie. The box had info about letting the dough warm up a few minutes to room temperature before unrolling it onto a pie pan. Or could microwave for a few seconds.

My brain misfired and had my fingers microwave the dough for defrost on a low setting. Unfortunately, the defrost setting is meant for FROZEN items. When I pulled out the plate of the rolled dough, I discovered the dough was tepid and soft, un-unrollable. D'oh!

I hatched Plan B—cookies. That plan worked OK. Yield was 13, with confetti sprinkles, but I thought it could use additional sweetening.

I hatched the sweet-tweak the next day after having only three cookies left. I spread some vanilla frosting, then glued additional sprinkles.

During the resolution of the pie dough, I poked around the web for ideas about pie dough cookies. I also expanded my thoughts about easy cooky making. Not addressing no-effort, ready-to-eat cookies nor the other extreme—scratch cookies. (I'm practically on permanent hiatus from physical effort and expense required for scratch cookies.)

Actual Pie Crust Cookies

I stumbled upon some sites for making cookies from pie crust. Some recipes use unroll-pie-crust dough, some suggest either unroll-dough or homemade. One calls for leftover dough. The commonality of these recipes is addition of cinnamon and extra sugar. Looks like adding butter is helpful.

• "3-Ingredient Cinnamon Sugar Cookies" is a true unroll-pie-dough recipe that uses only pie crust, sugar, and cinnamon. This recipe would not have worked in my case, as my dough was already kaput.
• "Easy Pie Crust Cookies" actually calls for a package of refrigerated Pillsbury Pie Crusts! She adds cinnamon, sugar, and melted butter, then cooky-cuts them out.
• "Pie Crust Cookies" provides guidance for using leftover pie crust. I do wonder about the small scale the baker uses—4 ounces of pie dough and rest of ingredient amounts. BTW, she calls for a lot more than three ingredients. The pix, however, are divine!
• "Cinnamon Sugar Pie Crust Cookies" suggests either store-bought or homemade pie crust, along with four additional ingredients.
• "Easy Pie Crust Cookies" also suggests either store-bought or homemade pie crust. Spartan amount of ingredients besides the crust—sugar, cinnamon, and optionally, melted butter. Her recipe uses cooky cutters.

Pretty EZ Cooky Dough Using Room-temperature Kits

Making cookies out of refrigerated rolled pie dough like I did is not economical. The pack of two was ~$3, total of just over 14 ounces. You can buy cooky mix in the cake aisle for about $2 for 17.5 ounces (example: Betty Crocker) with several varieties.

BTW, I used only one-half of my pie dough package for the 13 cookies. From looking at a website for BC cookies, the entire package yield would be 36. Sooo, if I'd used half of a BC package, the cost would have been 1/3 less than the pie dough, and the yield would have been about 50% more.

Almost EZ Cooky Dough Using Cake Mix

The standard easy recipe I use is one box of yellow cake mix, 1/3 C oil, and 2 eggs. Yellow cake is easy because the ingredients are simple. I'm not sure how factory ingredients differ among yellow, white, and butter-recipe; however, I know they require different added ingredients. For chocoholics, chocolate cake mix requires the same ingredients as yellow cake.

As for economy, each boxful weighs about 15.25 ounces. The yield, after adding oil and eggs, can range between 48 and 56. Yield is even higher, but the cost also more, if you add in choco chips and nuts.

EZ Cooky Dough Using Refrigerated Pre-mixed Cooky Dough

Refrigerated pre-mixed cooky dough comes in two forms—pellet-shapes and sausage-shaped wrapped ("chub"). Pellets come usually 24 to a pound. Open the pack, break at edges onto pan, and bake in pre-heated oven. With the slightly more laborious chubbed dough, peel away the plastic wrap, spoon the dough onto pan(s) or cut into pieces onto pan(s), and bake in pre-heated oven.

So, are you inclined to make pie dough cookies? Various other types of cookies with varying efforts?

Cookie Mix Recipe: Fat Deviating

I've been on a roll lately with deviating from sweets recipes—even easy and convenient ones. This time, I deviated from a Krusteaz Triple Chocolate Chunk cookie mix. (Krusteaz has nothing to do with the Simpsons show clown, Krusty.)

The box calls for only 1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter and one egg besides the packaged mix. Simple. But I didn't want to use only all butter for the fat.

Sooo, I used half the butter called for. The other half, I replaced with one tablespoon of sesame oil and enough cooking oil to fill 1/2 cup.

Yes, I realized AFTER I baked the cookies that I put in too much cooking oil. I should have added three tablespoons of cooking oil instead of seven, resulting in 400 extra calories (200 calories x 2 oz. oil).

The results weren't disastrous. The cookies came out crispy, and just a mite oilier than if I'd replaced the correct amounts of fat. The cookie webpage claimed the cookies to be "chewy". They had 400 additional calories spread over 46 cookies, which amounted to less than 10 extra calories per cooky.

According to the Krusteaz box's nutritional table, the dry ingredients total 2160 calories (120 calories x 18 servings of two 2"-diameter cookies). A prepared mix of dry and wet ingredients total 3060 (170 per serving). Anyway, if I had prepared my 46 cookies with the equivalent fat substitutions, each cooky would have been 66 1/2 calories (3060/46). Instead, each cooky came to about 75 calories (3460/46).

The Krusteaz box displayed a table that listed yields as follows:

• 56 2" cookies (2 t dough)
• 24 2-1/2" cookies (1 rounded T dough)
• 2 3" cookies (2 rounded T dough).

The nutritional table estimated a yield of 36 2" cookies. As my yield was 46, I'm guessing my tablespoonfuls were somewhere between level and slightly concave.

Although I increased the number of ingredients from the box's recommendation, it was by only two. The sesame oil, a favorite additive of mine, gave the cookies a nutty flavor. The cooking oil reduced the amount of saturated fat because of butter. Yes, overall fat was higher. Next time, I'll try to remember to substitute the right amounts. :-)

My pixstrip panels show the following images:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients
3. Pan with raw dough/baked cookies
4. Plate of cookies (yum)

To search for other sweets recipes (most of them EZ), use the search feature at the upper left of the webpage, or click keywords in the index at the upper right.