It just wouldn't be an Amy Baking Project if I didn't stay up super late working on it. I went to bed around 1:30 this morning so I'm feeling a bit droopy. But! The cookie tarts turned out great! I love them so much!
As soon as I got home from work, I started on the cookie part. I did everything exactly as I always have – sugar cookie mix, 1 stick of butter and 1 egg. But the mixture was really moist. Too moist. I checked, double checked and triple checked the recipe, but it still jived with what I had used. I kept thinking maybe it should have been a 1/2 stick of butter, but the recipe clearly says a full stick. Hm. So while the tops of the cookies were a perfect light golden brown, the bottom part wasn't cooked well. Since the tarts have a chewy texture anyway, I hoped it would all work out in the end.
At this point is was 6:30, plenty early enough to get to bed at a reasonable hour. But, once I made the icing and started the decorating process, I didn't want to stop for a dinner break, so I decided to wait until after dinner to start on phase 2.
Sometime later I mixed the strawberry cream cheese and the powdered sugar. Instead of spooning it into the cups, I put the mixture in a bag, and using a fairly large round tip, I piped the filling into the cookie cups. What a great idea that turned out to be. So much cleaner and easier than trying to spoon in the filling.
Next I made my own vanilla cream cheese frosting. (I bought a can of ready made just in case the recipe didn't turn out well) It was delicious! Tom taste tested it for me and declared it better than the store bought frosting. I concur. Now for the fun part! I tinted the icing a pale yellow, piped it on top of the cookie tarts, and decorated with fondant flowers and sugar pearls. That probably took longer than it should have because I was being all picky about the exact arrangement on each cookie. But it was fun, so who cares.
Well, I should have cared, a little. Because after the cookies were decorated to perfection, I had a heck of a lot of cleaning up to do. And I'm not one who can leave a mess in the kitchen, planning to clean up the next day. No way. Got that from my mom. So I'll manage to get through the day somehow and sleep in tomorrow morning.
I'm not one to brag about myself, but I am really quite proud of these cookie tarts. :)