Pumpkin Pie-balls

I love this season - in large part because I get to bake with pumpkin. Pies, cookies, cheesecakes, souffles... Mmmmm. There's a recipe for pumpkin pie in the new Cooks' Illustrated that I want to try out, too, come to think of it. Anyway...

I have a few different Halloween baking opportunities this year, and wanted to come up with something creative to make for them. In a nod to my genes (thanks, Dad) I feel the need to name my creations with some terrible pun. Hence: Pumpkin pie-balls.

This is basically a pumpkin cookie, covered with a disc of pie dough with a slit down the center and a raisin for a pupil. Steps:


Pumpkin cookies - I use some old recipe I have laying around, but I'm sure any pumpkin cookie recipe will work. These scoops are too big by about half, I cut them down a lot on the second batch.


Pie dough. Cookie cutter circles. Slit in the middle. Pretty simple.


Terrible picture. But: pie dough draped over cookie dough. As I said, there was too much cookie dough on this first set, on the second batch the pie dough draped more fully over the edges and baked up better. Plunk a raisin in the middle (not pictured) and push it in a ways - it'll try to rise up as they bake.


Et voila. Pumpkin pieballs. Making them again, I'll probably scale them down - use a smaller circle cutter and less filling.