Pinterest Test Kitchen: January 2013

You live, you learn. You love, you learn. You cry, you learn. You loo-ooo-ooose you le-arn... Just had to throw some Alanis into this post today. Except, I'm adding the line "You bake, you lear-er-er-ern!" :)

I realized lately how many recipes I have pinned on Pinterest, but just how few I've actually tried. Inspired to whip something new up off of my recipe board, I decided to make these Gingerbread Cheesecake Bites. They look adorable and delicious, right? 

(Photo from Created by Diane)

I picked up the ingredients and headed home, ready to bake. I started reading all the comments and noticed that several people said that their cookie cups puffed up and the filling disappeared in the oven. Several people commented to wait to fill the cookies until after baking, since there's no eggs in the recipe. I decided to go the fill-after-baking route because I really didn't want my filling to vanish or, worse, spill out all over my oven. 

I bought the break-and-bake style dough, so just broke off the pieces, rolled them in sugar, and pressed them into the mini muffin tins. Oh yeah, and snapped pictures with my phone, of course! :)

As the other commenters predicted, they puffed way up in the oven to the point that they looked like a muffin. Thankfully, as they cooled, the went back down so I was left with these...

It's hard to tell in the picture, but they were huge! Nothing mini about them! 

I hadn't lost all hope yet, because I figured I'd just have giant, yummy cookies. So I whipped up the frosting and filled the cups. 

The original recipe didn't call for enough liquid to make the frosting stirrable, much less able to by piped into the cookie cups. I had to add extra milk to get the filling to the right consistency. But even then, the icing never sat up even after being in the fridge overnight. They tasted alright, but nothing spectacular or anything, and the icing was a big mess when trying to bite into these. 

So, Pinterest Fail. Whomp whomp. Has anyone else tried these before? Any tips on how to make these turn out?