Turn Your Favorite Pie Into A Cookie For A More Portable Slice

Autumn marks the beginning of pie season, with apple and pumpkin offerings lining the shelves of grocery stores all over. It's easy to see why. Pie makes a delicious dessert for gatherings, and many celebrations occur toward the end of the year. However, while a pie is easy to serve and eat at a dining table, it's less convenient for get-togethers that involve standing around or those taking place on the go. Serving pie can be downright messy at events with small children. Fortunately, turning your favorite pie into cookies offers the best of both desserts — and does so in a portable package.

If you're wondering how to turn a pie into a cookie, it's not as complex or outlandish as it sounds. After all, pie is just crust with filling in the middle. Pie filling can easily be infused into cookies — turning them into mini pies of sorts — by placing the filling in the center of plain cookie dough, which complements its flavors as a pie crust does. You might be surprised by how well most fillings fit into a cookie. 

When it comes to making portable pie cookies, there are numerous classic flavors you can try. You can also get creative with your mini pies, but the simplest to recreate in cookie form are those that use canned fruit filling from the grocery store. Our apple pie cookie recipe utilizes this approach, but you can achieve the same results with cherry, blueberry, and peach fillings.

Whether you purchase pie filling in a can or mix it yourself, it should go directly in the center of storebought or homemade cookie dough. Then, wrap the dough around the filling to create a cookie. Alternatively, you can make indentations in the center of your cookie dough and use pie filling as a baked-in topping.

The first method gives your cookies the look and taste of a pocket pie — and works with fillings beyond fruit. Pumpkin and sweet potato pie fillings are ideal for fall, and they both come in cans, making them as simple to use as their fruity counterparts. Pecan cookie-pies are another adorable and delicious recipe that will steal the show at family gatherings, though these may require extra effort in the kitchen. If you feel like baking, you can also whip up a key lime pie filling or the interior of numerous other delicious pie recipes, then work it into your cookies instead. You can even serve these cookies with whipped cream or syrup to give your guests the complete pie experience, albeit in a slightly smaller package.