Cheesecake Cookies

Recipe from La Receta de la Felicidad
(Site is in Spanish, so you may need to use Google Translate)

Servings: ~24 cookies

Ingredients

For the cookies:

400g all purpose flour (3 ⅔ cup)
125g powdered sugar (1 ¼ cup)
200g butter (1 cube + 6 Tablespoons)
1 medium egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 pinch of salt
**Mini muffin pan needed

For the filling:

100g creme fraîche (If you can’t find it, you can substitute cream cheese (preferred) or whipping cream 35% minimum)
200 g cream cheese, room temperature
100g condensed milk
2 tablespoons lemon juice (juice of half a lemon or so)
strawberry jam (or raspberry, cherry, or nutella)

For the decoration:

red and green food coloring

Preparation

Make the cookie cups first.  (or buy them and skip this step all together)  Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy.  Add egg and vanilla.   Sift in flour and salt.  Form dough into a ball, and split in two pieces.

Place one half between 2 pieces of parchment paper and carefully roll out until approximately ¼ inch thick.  Remove top piece of parchment and cut dough with round cookie cutter that has jagged edges.  When selecting your cookie cutter, make sure it’s larger than the mini muffin cavity.

Flip the mini muffin pan upside-down and carefully place pieces of cut-out dough over the cavities.  The edges of the dough will crack, but that’s ok.  Just pinch them back into place and smooth it out.

 

Put pan in refrigerator while preheating the oven to 350°F

Bake the cookies about 10-12 minutes, until lightly browned around the edges. The remove from the oven, let stand 5 minutes on the pan, then transfer to wire rack to cool.

Once the cookies are cool, prepare the filling. Combine condensed milk, fresh cream (crème fraîche) and cheese and lemon juice. Don’t use low-fat or fat-free products.  The fat is necessary to allow the mixture to set.

Spoon out 2 Tablespoons of the cream cheese mixture into a small bowl, and another 2 Tbsp in another bowl.  Dye one of the bowls with red food coloring and the other with green.

 

Place a teaspoon of jam in the base of the cookie, and cover with cream cheese.  Smooth out the mixture with a small spoon, or *carefully* tap the cookie in the palm of your hand allowing the filling to settle.  Decorate the top with holly leaves and berries.  The original recipe says to use a tooth pick.  I wasn’t able to make that work.  I resorted to an icing bag with a small piping tip.  I finished off the leaves with a toothpick.

Place pan of finished cookies in the refrigerator for about 4 hours to set.