I ran into an intriguing item at the Sugar n Spice Amish bakery in Oakland, Maryland once. The confections were called "clothespins." (and, yes, I checked, they are clothespins not clothes spins, but I suppose if you Google clothes spin cookies will still bring you here)
"We call them that because back when clothespins were still wooden they would wrap the dough around it," said, Christina, one of the Amish workers at the store.
❓ What Are Clothespin Cookies?
The resulting cookie is something that resembles a mini-creme horn. Delicious! I searched through my files to find a comparable recipe and I couldn't. I searched online and didn't find a lot, but there are some. Most of the recipes are very complicated. While the cookie is delicious, they are small and to me it wouldn't be worth going through hours of labor for two-bite bliss.
But I found this recipe in an Amish cookbook. The recipe is easy to follow and comes out with a dessert just like the ones pictured. Now, what makes this recipe so easy is because you "cheat" by starting out with frozen puff pastry and you use marshmallow creme, etc. For those of you who really enjoy laborious baking, you can Google recipes for clothespins and find ones where you make the puff pastry from scratch. I'm sure they are great, but, again, no thanks for me.
📋 More About Clothespin Cookie Ingredients
This is the type of puff pastry that the recipe calls for, if you want a shortcut, anyway. And who doesn't?
Most Amish would use a whole milk in the recipe and I'd encourage you to do the same.
This is the type of cone-shaped cookie form that the dough would be wrapped around., but you could use a wooden dowel rod (sure, I know you have those lying around. But I have heard that chopsticks are a good alternative to dowel rods. Or, actually, here's an idea, since they are clothespin cookies, use clothespins to wrap the dough around!
🍪 More Amish Cookie Recipes
Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies
🖨️ Full Recipe
Amish Clothespin Cookies
Ingredients
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 450 F.
- Thaw the pastry and roll out on a lightly floured surface until it forms a 12"x10" rectangle.
- Cut into ½"x6" long strips using a pizza cutter.
- Wrap each strip around a cone-shaped cookie form (or a wooden dowel rod), moistening slightly with water and overlapping the edges slightly. Bake for 5 minutes then turn oven down to 375 and bake for 10 more minutes.
- Carefully remove from forms and cool completely.
- With an electric mixer on high speed, beat together sugar, Crisco, vanilla, and milk for 10 min.
- Add marshmallow cream and beat until combined.
- Color with food coloring, if desired.
- Using a pastry bag, pipe filling into cooled cookies. Sprinkle with sifted powdered sugar before serving.
- Store cookies in an airtight container. Cookies are best if refrigerated until used. May be frozen.
carla
YUM!!!
Bonnie P.
These cookies sounded really good until I saw that the filling was made with two cups of Crisco! I like the photo of them but will pass on the recipe.
Kevin
Fair point, Bonnie.....there are recipes for this, though, that are much more "homemade", I chose a more "processed" one, which I probably shouldn't have...I was aiming for a quicker recipe, but quicker means more processed junk in it like Crisco..
Denise Marion
Suggestion to replace the Crisco with Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Happy baking!
Kevin
Good idea, thanks for sharing!
D. Smith
I would substitute part of the crisco, at least, with real butter. Hey, it's better than greasy old Crisco!
Kevin Williams
Agree with that also, butter is better!
hmchelen
I wonder if you could use whip cream in a can for the filling. Just keep shells in frig or freezer then when want to eat some fill them with whip cream from can. It has nozzle so would think you could fill shells easy.
Mary
hmcelen, you can’t freeze puff pastry after it’s baked,it gets soggy. Whipped cream is a good filling also custard would be good.
Kevin
Thanks for the insight, Mary!
D. Smith
Makes it sound more like a cream puff than a cookie, no?
Kevin Williams
Agreed, kind of like a mini-cream puff!
Donna Furlong
I made these today but used cream cheese instead of crisco and added melted chocolate for the filling. They came out delicious.
Kevin Williams
Thanks for telling me, Donna, so glad they turned out well!!