This Brilliant Pillsbury Cookie Dough Hack Will Upgrade Your Fall Baking

<span> Credit: Lauren Masur</span> <span class="copyright">Credit: Lauren Masur</span>
Credit: Lauren Masur Credit: Lauren Masur

Pies are quintessential for fall. When the foliage begins to peak, the flaky dessert begins plastering grocery shelves and restaurant menus. The classics typically involve apple, pumpkin, and pecan, but this season, recipe creators are stepping outside the box with their pastry innovations.

Recently, Maddison Koutrouba, a creator who posts recipes on the Instagram account @thesqueakymixer, dropped a delicious hack for making pie dough with a peculiar yet nostalgic fall ingredient — Halloween sugar cookie dough. Koutrouba originally posted the genius trick last year and recently reposted a tutorial that racked up nearly 25K views.

In the Instagram clip, Koutrouba demonstrates how to create a sugar cookie cheesecake pie. The main character of this dessert is the Pillsbury Ready-to-Bake Pumpkin Shape Sugar Cookie Dough — available  for $4.89 at Target — which gets baked into a delicious crust. And it doesn’t end there.

To create a decadent filling, Koutrouba first whips cream. Then, the recipe creator beats cream cheese with the confectioner’s sugar, granulated sugar, sour cream, lemon juice, and vanilla until smooth. The whipped cream is then folded into the cheesecake batter. After lathering this filling into the baked sugar cookie pie crust, there’s no additional baking involved; it just sets in the fridge for a few hours.

Followers are obsessed with this genius Halloween sugar cookie dough hack. One person commented on the post, “Made it last year, and it was a hit! I’ll be making another one in a few days!” While another hungry baker mentioned, “I was literally drooling watching this, saved to try it later!!!”

Koutrouba also posted a recipe for copycat Pillsbury pumpkin slice-and-bake sugar cookies a few weeks ago if you want to tackle that as a fun weekend project. With fall in full swing, this genius hack reminds us that there’s joy in getting creative with the most nostalgic ingredients.

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