Cherry Pie Sugar Cookies

Trolling Pinterest the other day I came across a recipe for mini cherry pies with a sugar cookie crust AKA cherry pie cookie cups.  Now I'm not much for pies myself, but my father-in-law loves cherry pie so I thought this would be a good idea to make for Thanksgiving this year.  I always worry though.  It just seems anytime I try to cook for anyone else it always turns out bad.  It's kind of my curse.  I should probably just stick to a regular old cherry pie, but what would be the fun in that, right?

Here goes nothing.

So I start by making a basic sugar cookie dough, thank you Betty Crocker.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 C Powdered Sugar
1 C Butter, softened
1 Egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 1/2 C all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar

I start by mixing together the flour, baking soda, and nonexistent cream of tartar (didn't have any so I just left it out??) in a small bowl and set it aside.  Next up I mixed the powdered sugar, butter, egg, vanilla, and almond extract (this stuff smells awesome, really, really awesome) by hand.  Yup you heard me, by hand.  Turns out I had forgotten my mixer at my sister's house the other day when we whipped up some shortbread for a christmas party.  Seams kinda weird having a christmas party before Thanksgiving, but her school is weird in general so I guess it works out.  Cue curse of the can't cook for others variety.

So back to mixing the ingredients by hand.  Just mix it by hand my sister says, no problem.  That's what great grandma always did.  Well she must have had arms of steal.  I mean it was hard.  My arms were killing me.  I called mercy and left the batter a little chunky.  Then I started adding the dry ingredients I previously set aside a little bit at a time and mixed it thoroughly.  After that the dough was divided into two lumps, put into a Ziploc and set in the fridge to firm up for a couple of hours whilst the oven preheated to 350 degrees.  Meantime back at the ranch I whipped up a batch of Banana Cream Pie for my lovely sister, you can find the link for that here.

Two hours later I pulled out the sugar cookie dough, rolled it into two logs and sliced'em up into ten to twelve sections.  Then I rolled the sections into little balls.

 I placed some leftover cupcake liners into a muffin tin and placed a dough ball into each liner. 

 Next up you put the pan into the oven and let it cook for 15 minutes.  Here's the scary part.  After the timer goes off you pull them out and use a spoon to squash the center of each cookie down to make room for the cherry filling.  Fill each cookie with about a tbsp of cherry filling and cook for another 3-5 minutes (it took another 6 minutes for me to make sure the dough was cooked all the way through in the center).

While it finishes cooking, heat up a tbsp of butter and mix it with 1 C of powdered sugar and 1-2 tbsps milk.  You will use this to top your cherry pies when they come out of the oven.  Remove from muffin tin and allow to cool.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Well folks, for better or worse they are done.  I hope they turn out okay.  Of course I tried one to see, but I honestly hate pie, it's too sweet.  These definitely tasted like cherry pie though so I think I'm good to go.  Wish me luck.