Food You Can Eat: Jeweled Cheese Puffs

First things first:  This recipe was in my grandmother’s collection, but it came from her oldest sister—my great aunt—whom I knew when I was very young.  I always liked visiting her.  She was sweet and pleasant, and her driveway had one of those neat grassy strips in the middle of two concrete strips.  Considering our driveway was a combination of gravel and sink holes, her driveway always looked very fancy. 

A caveat before we get started:  I topped the puffs with what I had left over from my batch of fresh blueberry preserves, but I didn’t have enough to top all of the puffs.  So, I decided to use the Smucker’s Natural Strawberry preserves that I had on hand instead of opening one of my newly canned jars of blueberry preserves.  That was a major fail.  The Smucker’s preserves ran off the puffs while baking, and there was something about them that prevented the puffs from…puffing.  So, if you don’t have home made preserves on hand, over which you personally slaved, then I have no hope to offer you.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Jeweled Cheese Puffs

2 Cups Flour

2 tsp. Baking Powder

2 Tbsp. Sugar

1 Cup Butter, softened

8 oz. Cream Cheese

2 Eggs

Fruit Preserves

Powdered Sugar Glaze

2 Cups Loose Powdered Sugar

½ Cup Milk or Water

1 tsp. Vanilla

Sift together flour, baking powder and sugar.

In a separate bowl, cream together butter and cream cheese until fluffy.  Add eggs, one at a time, and beat well. 

Slowly add dry ingredients until just combined.  Chill for 1 hour. 

Roll dough to a ¼-inch thickness.  This dough is VERY sticky, so be sure to use a well-floured surface and a well-floured rolling pin.  If you have one of those super pretentious marble rolling pins that you can put in the refrigerator, use that too.  Cut with a biscuit cutter, dipping the cutter in flour between cuts, and place each round on a parchment lined cookie sheet.  Gather all of the remaining scraps and place back in the refrigerator while you work on finishing the first round.  When your first round of cookies is baked, the scraps should be cold enough again to combine back into a dough ball for rolling.  You should be able to get at least three or four rounds of cookies out of the dough as long as you’re being efficient with your cutting.  Don’t be a lazy cutter and leave a ton of space between cuts.  This dough is hard enough to work as it is without dealing with a bunch of self-inflicted hassle.

Make an impression in the center of each round.  Fill each round with preserves.

Bake in a 375-degree oven for 10-15 minutes.

Frost with Powdered Sugar Glaze.

Sift powdered sugar into a bowl.  Slowly add liquid and whisk until smooth.  It may not take all of the liquid, so be careful not to make the glaze too thin.  Whisk in vanilla.  Drizzle over the tops of the cookies.