Fruity Lemon Cheesecake Cookie Cups

Do any of you use Safeway’s “Just-for-U” program/app? I always forget about it until I’m mostly done with my shopping. Then I’m standing in the aisle, trying to get service on my phone so I can check if anything I’m already purchasing has a coupon. Occasionally, instead of a coupon, I find a freebie. “Mini-birthday party…aisle 5.” I know the purpose of these giveaways is to get you hooked on some new product, but I don’t care. Free stuff is free stuff. I’ve had a bag of Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie Mix hanging out in my pantry thanks to Just-for-U and figured I’d bake up some delightful mouthfuls of deliciousness with it. These fruity lemon cheesecake cookie cups are sweet and creamy with a little cookie crunch. Yum. Yum.

Start with a bag of sugar cookie mix and the ingredients needed (according to your package) for rolled sugar cookies. You can also just use whatever rolled sugar cookie recipe you love.

If the butter is supposed to be softened, you should be able to press your finger into it and leave an indentation. It should still have a little resistance though. No puddling under the weight of your finger.

Blend it all together until it forms a ball. Then sprinkle some flour out, a little more on the dough and roll it out.

Then, using a biscuit cutter (or any round cutter…even a drinking glass will work), cut that dough up into some rounds.

Press each round into a greased cupcake tin – along the bottom and a little bit up the sides. They don’t have to be perfect. Just press them in there.

Before baking, prick the centers with a fork. They’ll still puff up a little and you’ll have to prick them again when they come out, but this keeps the puffing up to a minimum.

Bake until just golden, they’ll be cooling in the pan, so you don’t want them completely done when they come out. As soon as you take the pan out of the oven, prick them again and then run a butter knife along the edges to loosen the cookie cups from the pan. This will make removing them later a snap.

Now we’ll make a delicious cream cheese, lemon curd filling. It’s practically the same as the one I use in my Rustic Raspberry Lemon Cheesecake Tart, but with a little more cream to make it easy to pipe into these little cookie cups. You could also just spoon it in there. But I think the little flourish of ridges is so pretty.

I used strawberries and blueberries for my cups, but really, any fruit would be delicious on top of that creamy goodness. Just be sure you cut it up into about even sizes. I diced my strawberries to about the size of blueberries.

Pile that fruit on top of your lemon tinged cheesecake filling, and your cookie cups are done! I mixed a tiny bit of simple syrup in with my berries to make them glisten. Sugar makes things pretty.

Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Gooooooood. A perfect mouthful of yum. Enjoy!

Print Recipe for Fruity Lemon Cheesecake Cookie Cups

Fruity Lemon Cheesecake Cookie Cups

For the Cookie Cups:

1 package Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie Mix
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour (plus more for sprinkling)
1/3 cup softened (not melted) butter
1 egg

Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly spray 24 mini muffin cups with cooking spray.
In large bowl, mix Cookie Cup ingredients until a ball of dough forms. *Flour your surface and the dough and roll out to about 1/4 inch thick.
Cut into rounds and press each round along the bottom and half up the side of a muffin cup. Pierce bottom with a fork.
Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until set and very light golden brown (dough will puff slightly). 5. 5. Prick with a fork to allow cup to return to shape. Run a knife around the edge of each cup to loosen from pan and then cool completely in pan, about 15 minutes. Remove cookie cups from muffin cups to cooling rack.

* You can also just use your favorite rolled cookie dough recipe. Then proceed.

For the Lemon Cheesecake Filling:

4 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup powdered sugar
3 Tbsp. heavy cream
1/3 cup lemon curd, homemade or store-bought

In a bowl combine softened cream cheese and powdered sugar. Mix with a hand-mixer or by hand until smooth and the sugar is well incorporated. Add the heavy cream and mix for about 1 minute. Fold in the lemon curd.

For the fruit filling:

Strawberries
Blueberries
Simple Syrup (or sugar)

Cut strawberries into blueberry sized pieces. Mix with blueberries and drizzle with about 1 teaspoon simple syrup (or a teaspoon sugar). Mix to combine.

To assemble Cookie Cups:

Pipe cheesecake filling into cooled cookie cup and spoon berry mixture on top.