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?

Confetti Cupcake Bites

My recipe makes half-size cupcakes, using nonpareils and jimmies in two half batches during one baking session. Contrast the results of the sprinkle types, and decide on your own single or duo sprinkle-type morsels. I've been dancing around using both kinds of sprinkles for cake mix cookies in a couple of previous recipe articles. This time, I'm talking about using cake mix for actual cake.

In case you're unfamiliar with differences between nonpareils and jimmies, "Sprinkles, Demystified: An Explanation of All Types" explains a main difference as shape—round for nonpareils and cylindrical for jimmies.

Round Sprinkles: These can more specifically be referred to as nonpareils. These are those teeny-tiny round balls that can come in a single color or in rainbow.

Cylinder Sprinkles: Sprinkles with a cylinder shape are made by mixing up a paste ...a little slower to “bleed” color than the nonpareil type of sprinkle. ....In some parts of the United States, particularly Pennsylvania and the Northeast, this type of sprinkle (the chocolate type in particular, it seems) are referred to as “Jimmies”.

Caution: Nonpareils "bleed" rather readily in moisture, even more so with cake batter than with cooky dough as in my "Rainbow Nonpareil Cake Mix Cookies" recipe. Thus, minimize time and effort when stirring nonpareils into batter.

My pixstrip shows the following image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients
3. Mixed cake mix batter
4. Batter divided into two Pyrex bowls—with nonpareils in the left bowl and jimmies in the right bowl
5. Each batter type in separate cupcake pans
6. Baked cupcakes
7. Cut sample cupcakes for visual contrast
8. Some cupcake bites arranged in a tin

Implements

• Mixing bowl
• Electric mixer
• Cup for eggs
• Measuring cup(s) for dispensing batter
• Tablespoon measuring spoon for measuring sprinkles
• Spatula for scraping batter
• Same-size bowls if making separate batches of nonpareil and jimmies batter (If making only one kind of cupcake, skip using these two bowls.)
• Cupcake pans

Ingredients

• 1 box cake mix (I used Betty Crocker Golden Vanilla.)
• Eggs (as listed on box)
• Cooking oil (as listed on box)
• Water (as listed on box)
• Sprinkles as follows (option a, b, or c—pixtrip shows option "a".):
  1. 2 T nonpareils for 1/2 recipe, 4 T jimmies for the other 1/2 recipe
  2. 4 T nonpareils for a whole recipe
  3. 8 T jimmies for a whole recipe
• Spray oil

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°.
2. Spray pans with oil.
3. Follow box instructions for mixing powder, eggs, oil, and water together.
4. If making separate nonpareil and jimmies recipes, divide the cake batter equally into two bowls. (I used two Pyrex bowls and evened out the weights.) If making a batch with only one type of sprinkles, skip this step.
5. Add the sprinkles.
• When using nonpareils, measure and very lightly stir them into the batter to minimize color "bleed".
• When using jimmies, measure and stir them into the batter, but don't worry about color "bleed".
6. Scoop the batter into the pan wells, each about 3/4 full. (For more crunch in the nonpareil version, sprinkle an additional pinchful over each well after dispensing the batter.)
7. Bake for about 17-20 minutes. Test for doneness with a toothpick.
8. Remove the baked cupcakes. Tilt them in the wells or place them onto a cooling rack to cool.
9. Frost if desired. Beware of extra effort required and added calories in gilding the lily.

Post-Recipe Thoughts
Interestingly, the heat seemed to cause the jimmies to diffuse. That is, after baking, the jimmies looked wavy instead of retaining their rod shapes. But the jimmies morsels didn't bleed and change the cake color like the nonpareil morsels did.

When working with nonpareils, remember that they're itty bitty spheres. When I first opened the jar, I tilted it. Out came several orbs, rolling freely on the table, a challenge to easily stop their willy-nilly, runaway movements.

Cake mixes that already contain jimmies are available. When I made the jimmies version of cake mix cookies, using Betty Crocker's Party Rainbow Chip mix, I didn't think to sift it to measure the amount of jimmies. Maybe some day I'll break down and buy another box, remembering to check out the amount of jimmies before baking something.

Rainbow Nonpareil Cake Mix Cookies

Multicolor sprinkle decorations for packaged cookies, cakes, and cake mixes tend to more often be jimmies than nonpareils. These cookies vary from the ones I made when I used the Betty Crocker Rainbow Chip cake mix. Instead of using cake mix that already includes multicolor jimmies, I used basic cake mix and added rainbow nonpareils. (Wilton's product name is Rainbow Nonpareils.)

"Sprinkles, Demystified: An Explanation of All Types" explains a main difference as shape—round for nonpareils and cylindrical for jimmies.

Round Sprinkles: These can more specifically be referred to as nonpareils. These are those teeny-tiny round balls that can come in a single color or in rainbow.

Cylinder Sprinkles: Sprinkles with a cylinder shape are made by mixing up a paste ...a little slower to “bleed” color than the nonpareil type of sprinkle. ....In some parts of the United States, particularly Pennsylvania and the Northeast, this type of sprinkle (the chocolate type in particular, it seems) are referred to as “Jimmies”.

My pixstrip shows the following image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients
3. Stirred cake mix and nonpareils (dry ingredients)
4. Stirred eggs and oil (wet ingredients)
5. Blended dry and wet ingredients in the larger bowl
6. Raw dough in pan
7. Baked cookies in pan
8. Cookies on a cooling rack (some flipped back to right side up)

Implements

• Cooky pan(s)
• Pastry blender
• Mixing bowls (one medium-large, one small)
• Measuring cup (optional for cracking eggs individually before pouring them into bowl)
• Tablespoon for measuring out cooky dough
• Spatula for scraping dough onto pan
• Cooky spatula for lifting and transferring baked cookies
• Cooling rack for baked cookies

Ingredients

• 1 box vanilla cake mix (I used Betty Crocker French Vanilla.)
• 4 Tablespoons Wilton Rainbow Nonpareils
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup cooking oil

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°.
2. Use the pastry blender to stir the cake mix powder and nonpareils together in a medium-large bowl.
3. Use the pastry blender to stir the eggs and oil together in a small bowl.
4. Pour the eggs and oil mixture into the larger bowl and combine the ingredients.
5. Use a round tablespoon to scoop the dough. Shape to rounded, level, or concave height.
6. Drop the spoon's dough onto the cooky sheet, using the rubber spatula to ease out each lump.
7. Bake for about 9 to 11 minutes until the edges are lightly browned.
8. Use the cooky spatula to lift and transfer the done cookies onto cooling rack.

The batch made 38 cookies, ~65 calories each.

Post-Recipe Thoughts
Those nonpareils in these cookies "bled" slightly into the dough during mixing, turning the dough a light bluish gray. Interestingly, enough of the nonpareils' texture remained so that after baking, the cookies still had some crunchiness within the soft texture. Eh, at some time, I should try another cooky batch with jimmies in an egg-oil-powder dough to see if the jimmies bleed.

A few months ago, I actually did bake a jimmies version, using Betty Crocker Rainbow Chip cake mix, but I used butter instead of oil. Looking at pix I had taken of the process for "EZ Buttery Confetti Cake Mix Cookies", the jimmies did not bleed and tint the egg-oil-powder dough.

The nonpareils came free with a supermarket promotion. Normal price would run about $1.75 for the 3-ounce jar. The four tablespoons amounted to over half the jar, thus, about a dollar's worth. Cake mix tends to run slightly more than a dollar for a 15.25-ounce box. The oil cost about 30¢, and the eggs cost about 34¢.

If I calculate the cookies as having free nonpareils, each cooky comes to a little over 4¢. If I include nonpareil price, each cooky comes to about 9¢. Sure, a big price difference. OTOH, you make them fresh instead of buying them from a store or bakery. Yum—freshness and lower cost!

For a quick reference to price of eggs and oil, scroll to the bottom table at "Whataburger Pancakes, Mix, or Scratch". (I calculated costs of scratch pancake ingredients, an egg and oil being two of the items.)