Food: Cherry Cheesecake Cookies

America’s Test Kitchen’s Cherry Cheesecake Cookies are the kind of cookies with dough that needs to be separated in half and chilled for two hours. I hate cookies like this. So this time, I cheated. I put one half in the freezer for 45 minutes, and everything still turned out ok. Good for me for finally being able to take some liberties with the baking process.

Aside from the lag time for the cooling, these cookies were easy but fun to make. The recipe was basically a sugar cookie with the addition of cream cheese, which was then rolled in graham cracker crumbs.

Then, you use a tablespoon to make an indentation across the top for filling. The recipe calls for canned cherry pie filling, which makes me want to gag. I substituted American Spoon Cherry Butter, which is tart and smooth and does not contain an elephant’s dose of red dye #40.

And I have to say, even after altering the cooling method and making an ingredient substitution, these cookies came out pretty good. Maybe my bad luck in baking is over?