Coconut Cream-Cheese Pinwheels

From the Martha Makes Cookies app, available in the iOS App Store.

Coconut Cream-Cheese Pinwheels 
Makes: 2½ dozen

With their cream-cheese filling and strawberry-jam topping, these cookies are like small-scale cheesecakes, perfect for kids—with the added bonus of a pretty pinwheel cookie base.

INGREDIENTS

 

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface and spoon
cup sugar
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
3 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

 

1. Make the dough: Whisk together flour, sugar, and baking powder in a bowl. With an electric mixer, beat butter and cream cheese on medium-high speed until fluffy. Mix in egg and vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture, and beat until just combined. Divide dough in half, and pat into disks. Wrap each piece in plastic, and chill until dough is firm, 1 to 2 hours.

2. Make the filling: With an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and sugar until fluffy. Fold in coconut and chocolate chips.

3. Preheat oven to 350°. Remove one disk of dough from refrigerator. Roll about ⅛ inch thick on a lightly floured surface. With a fluted cookie cutter, cut into fifteen 2½-inch squares. Transfer to baking sheets lined with nonstick baking mats, spacing about 1½ inches apart. Chill 15 minutes. Repeat with remaining dough.

4. Place 1 teaspoon filling in center of each square. Using a fluted pastry wheel, cut 1-inch slits diagonally from each corner toward the filling. Fold every other tip over to cover filling, forming a pinwheel. Press lightly to seal. Use the tip of your finger to make a well in the top.

5. Using a pastry brush, lightly brush tops of pinwheels with egg. Sprinkle with sanding sugar. Bake 6 minutes. Remove from oven; use the lightly floured handle of a wooden spoon to make well a little deeper. Fill each well with about ½ teaspoon jam. Return to oven, and bake, rotating sheets halfway through, until edges are golden and cookies are slightly puffed, about 6 minutes more. Transfer sheets to a wire rack; let cool 5 minutes, then transfer cookies to rack to cool completely. Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days.

Coconut Cream-Cheese Filling

3 ounces cream cheese, softened
3 tablespoons sugar
1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
¼ cup white chocolate chips

 

Coconut Cream-Cheese Glaze

1 large egg, lightly beaten
Fine sanding sugar, for sprinkling
⅓ cup homemade or store-bought strawberry jam

Posted in

Permalink 1 Comment

One response to “Coconut Cream-Cheese Pinwheels

  1. Pingback: Recipe 52: Coconut Cream-Cheese Pinwheels « Nate Makes Cookies

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: