Pie Crust Cookies

Pie Crust Cookies! Pie crust coated in cinnamon sugar and rolled into pinwheel cookies for the holidays. A Christmas cookie tradition.

We all have those family recipes – the ones that are made year after year, lovingly passed from one generation to the next – and scarfed down in about 3 seconds flat.  The ones that you’d throw down with your own sister for, if she tried to snatch the last one.  This is one of those recipes.  We affectionately call these little babies Pie Crust Cooookies!

I can’t claim these mini swirls of flaky cinnamon-sugar-goodness as my own, but that’s the great thing about being married.  What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine.  You see, this recipe comes from Mr. Sellman’s side of the family.  I’m pretty certain every time we travel to visit his family, my mother-in-law has a bowl of these waiting for us.  At least, I generally like to think they are for me too.  But Mr. Sellman tends to believe the entire bowl was created for him and him alone.

Thank goodness this family recipe was lovingly passed on to me because I cannot count the batches of pie crust cookies that I’ve made over the years.  Thank you Nana! We love you!  And as each batch disappears, the recipe requests pour in.  Up until now, there was no written recipe with actual measurements to give, just a general technique.  Years ago, I tried to explain it all to my sister so that she could bake up a batch of her own… but something got VERY LOST in our recipe telephone-game.  She called, confused and frustrated, with a long log of baked pie crust which was crumbling into a flaky mess when she tried to cut it.  The big takeaway for me here – emphasize the order of events.  Brush.  Sprinkle.  Roll.  Cut.  THEN bake!

Now, let the popping begin!  These little guys define ‘poppable’ because before you know it, you’ve popped the entire batch right into your pie hole.  One.  Two. Three.  Twenty!  Have I just eaten an entire pie crust in cookie form?  Quite possibly!  But it’s Christmas, so we’ll just pass right over THAT little detail and go back to pie-crust-cookie-eating.

One year, I started a grass roots campaign to rename this little family treasure.  Pie Crust Cookies just seemed to say too much.  Let’s leave a little to the imagination so we can savor the warmth of the cinnamon, and be pleasantly surprised by the delicate flake of golden brown pie crust caramelized with sweet, sweet sugar.  We came up with the name Pauline’s Pinwheels, giving credit where credit is due, to Mr. Sellman’s grandmother who originally made these from the extra scraps of left over pie crust.  Who knew that decades later we’d be making batches of pie crust (or purchasing ready-made pie crust, shhh) just to make these cookies.  Unfortunately, the new name never stuck.  And while I sat around pondering the perfect name – the bowl of Pie Crust Cookies disappeared.

No matter what you call them – I hope you give them a try.  I have a feeling you’ll stand guard at the Pie Crust Cookie bowl for decades to come.

Pie Crust Cookies

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Pie Crust Cookies! Pie crust coated in cinnamon sugar and rolled into pinwheel cookies for the holidays. A Christmas cookie tradition.

• Author: Carrie Sellman

Ingredients

• 2 pie crusts (i.e. top and bottom) made from scratch or ready-to-bake
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• 6 tablespoons butter, melted

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Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 450.
2. Line a baking tray with parchment paper and set aside.  Two trays, if you have them, will help the baking process move even faster.
3. In a small bowl, mix sugar and cinnamon together.  Set aside.
4. Roll out one pie crust into a rectangle.
5. Brush surface with melted butter.
6. Sprinkle entire surface with a light coating of cinnamon sugar mixture.
7. Cut rectangle into four equal squares.
8. Roll up one square of pie crust into a little log.  Repeat with remaining three pieces.
9. Slice log into 1/2 inch pieces, trying not to press down too much, flattening the log.
10. Transfer slices onto baking tray, gently reshaping into rounds if needed.
11. Lightly brush each cookie with a little dab of melted butter.
12. Bake 7 to 9 minutes until golden brown but not burnt.  Burnt sugar does not taste good!  Remove from oven and let cool.
13. Repeat entire process with the second pie crust.
14. Serve and enjoy!  These will be delicious for about a week, but they won’t last that long.

Notes

• If you have excess sugar that pools around the bottom of the cookie after baking, you’ve sprinkled too much.  Go lighter on the sugar in the next batch

MORE CHRISTMAS COOKIES TO TRY:
Decorated Sugar Cookies
Snow Globe Cookies
Snickerdoodle Cupcakes
Gingerbread Cupcakes
Cream Tart Tree Cake