As I mentioned, I had quite the large amount of leftover filling from the pumpkin pie cheesecake. Not wanting it to go to waste (I hate waste) I thought the perfect solution would be mini galettes, with cheesecake filling and sliced apples. Since Martha’s crust was amazing (see recipe below) I put together another batch, and split it into 6 portions. Each portion was then rolled out, dolloped with filling and topped with apples which I had mixed with a little sugar, flour, lemon juice and cinnamon (think apple pie filling)
I greased a cookie sheet and baked them for about 35 minutes on 400. Success. Opposed to the cheesecake where there was not enough crust IMO, in these galettes the crust was the superstar. Especially the bits where it was folded over creating a nice cookie-like texture.
Since I still had enough filling to fill a small swimming pool (swimming in cheesecake batter would be a little gross) I needed something else. Brownies perhaps? But no, since my crazy family does not like overly dense, chocolatey, sickly sweet things (I know, right?) A google search for cookies turned up cheesecake thumbprint cookies which I used as my inspiration.
Pumpkin Cheesecake Thumbprint Cookies, modified from Bake or Break
Ingredients
- 2 sticks softened butter
- scant 1/2 c sugar (between 1/3 and 1/2)
- 1/4 t salt
- 1 t vanilla
- 1 egg yolk
- 2 C flour
- 2 T coco powder
- 1 t cinnamon
Method
- preheat oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper
- cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy
- add the salt, vanilla, and egg yolk and mix well to combine
- add the flour, coco and cinnamon and mix to incorporate. the dough should come together. don’t mix too much.
- roll into a ball and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- roll the dough into tablespoon sized balls and use your finger (or another object) to poke indentations in each cookie ball
- bake for 10 minutes, remove from oven, re-poke cookies and bake again for 8-10 minutes until just barely golden on the edges.
- remove from oven and let them cool (mostly completely cool)
- use a teaspoon to fill the cookies with cheesecake filling and return to the oven for 10-12 minutes until the filling doesn’t jiggle and looks…done. sprinkle with cinnamon, if you so desire.
After all of this baking, I still have more cheesecake filling. help?!