Strawberry Pillows

Our weekend project looked impressive in the cookbook picture, but was actually very easy. It was so easy, in fact, that Brett barely needed my help (it was his turn to take the lead.) He had chosen a recipe from his Taste of Home Baking Book entitled “Walnut Filled Pillows” but since we aren’t big fans of nuts in our desserts, he decided to use strawberry jam as a filling instead. Brett started by creaming butter, cream cheese and flour together. These were the only ingredients in the dough. I began to become leery when the dough smelled strongly of butter. I’m not the kind of girl to just eat butter, there’s gotta be sugar in there for me. Once the dough was all mixed up (still no sugar) we let it chill for an hour. Brett rolled out the dough with some difficulty and finally got it to the desired thickness. I love the Tupperware rolling mat that my mom got for me because it has the grid on there to help with measuring. Brett used the grid to carefully form the squares of dough.

This whole time I just watched. The next step was forming the pillows. All we did was put the dough square on the silpat, put a teaspoon of strawberry jam in the middle, wet the edges, fold it over, and crimp the open edges with a fork.

Brett was really going to town, but I was getting antsy just standing there wanting to help, so finally he let me do the filling and crimping, while he measured and cut squares. I could tell that he wanted to do it all himself, but it’s supposed to be OUR baking project not his! The crimping was pretty fun, and I took my time so that they turned out nice. During baking, some of the pillows oozed and exploded a little bit, and I would have liked them to get a little more golden. But all in all, they were cute.

After baking we sprinkled them with powdered sugar and Brett arranged them beautifully on the plate. They tasted good, but not like a cookie like I was expecting. The dough was very much like pie crust, so it was more like a little bite of strawberry pie, which is a good thing! Of course I would have preferred a sweeter treat, but these were certainly fun and easy.