Decorated Berry Pie Cookies

I'm kind of a "from scratch" food maker person. Like, if I could grow wheat in my backyard, I probably would. And then I would grind it up into flour and make noodles so that I could make noodle soup. But I would buy the chicken. Because... eeww. Chickens smell. And I have a little yard. It's only big enough for wheat. And tomatoes. And also an apple tree.

I make food from scratch for two reasons. And neither of them are good reasons. The first reason is probably obvious... I don't ever listen to what people tell me to do. I'm pretty sure that my own way is better. Boxed brownies? Eh. I could probably make them fudgier. (What? I'm insane. It's not even possible.) The second reason is even worse. I never plan ahead and I hate shopping. So like, let's pretend that last week I had a bunch of friends come over to decorate cookies. (Yeay!!) And that morning I decided that I wanted to make a giant sandwich to share. Of course, I don't have a great big loaf of bread just sitting around my house. So instead of going to the store like a sane person and buying that 99 cent loaf of bread... I made one. From scratch. Without a recipe of course, because who are they to tell me what to do?! And it turned out... quite awful. It was really tall and long and just WAAAAAYYY too much bread per slice of sandwich. And every single one of those sweet cookie decorating friends ate it anyway. (I threw mine away.)

So last year at Thanksgiving my grandmother came to stay with me for a week before the big day. Her very favorite pie is lemon. So I decided that I would be all old-fashioned and make lemon meringue pie, completely from scratch of course. She would be so proud of me. So Wednesday I make the pie crust. And Wednesday night my grandma and I make the lemon filling together. We are stirring that hot yellow pot of sweet lemon goodness and it's starting to get thicker and thicker...but then it stops getting thicker. And suddenly I realize I have no idea what I'm doing and it might not work out at all. And I start to panic because if this doesn't work out maybe my turkey will be awful too. Maybe I really should be reading directions and following recipes and buying my stuffing mix at the store instead of ruining Thanksgiving for the whole wide world. But wait! My grandma is there. So I ask her, "Is this what it's supposed to look like?" And she turns to me and says, "I don't know. I always use a box."

Our pie turned out delicious and not at all like a pie. We might have been better off with cookie pies. (But that won't stop us from trying that lemon meringue pie together again this year! Because as it turns out, my grandma doesn't listen to that little voice of reason in her head any better than I do. I love her. ) But maybe we'll make some berry pie cookies as back up this time. Don't worry. They are easier than it seems. It's just a lot of pictures.

1. Pipe an outline along the bottom and up the side with medium thickness cream icing. Make a little bulb of icing at the top. You can move through each of these steps as soon as the icing is crusted. If you are making at least 9-10 of these, you can probably just move on as soon as you are done with the last one.
2. Add a fluted crust with the same cream icing.
3. Add a curved crust piece.
4. And one across the top.
5. Fill in the rest of the pieces. Let the entire crust dry for an hour.
6. With medium thickness purple icing, fill in the side of the pie slice. I decided some should be dripping out of the pie, but that's totally your call.
7. Immediately sprinkle with sugar pearls.
8. Fill in the gaps in the crust with purple icing.
9. And again, sprinkle with sugar pearls immediately. Let the whole pie dry for at least 30 minutes.
10. Mix some brown and green food coloring with water on a plate. Quickly brush on to the crust.
11. Blot that water off with a paper towel.
12. Let it dry and you have a cinnamon crusted slice of huckleberry pie.