There’s a lot to celebrate around Halloween. You can dress up in elaborate costumes, binge watch your favorite spooky movies, and eat your weight in candy. But one of the holiday’s underrated charms is the launch of festive Pillsbury sugar cookies.
You know exactly which ones I’m talking about: the pre-shaped cookies with pumpkin and ghost designs that arguably taste better raw than they do baked. They are truly the star of spooky season.
We don’t exactly need an excuse to buy a box, but this viral TikTok recipe had us sprinting to the supermarket. User @thesqueakymixer transformed the Pillsbury cookie into the base of a cheesecake.
There are plenty of festive food hacks on TikTok, but this is one of the most ingenious ideas we’ve seen. So we decided to put this hack to the test to see if the Pillsbury cookie crust beats out the standard graham cracker version.
According to the TikTok, you place one box worth of cookie dough at the base of a springform pan. Then, you bake the cookies until they spread and form a consistent crust along the bottom.
I foolishly only bought one box of cookies and was left with some small gaps at the base of the cheesecake. If I were to do this again, I’d buy two—one of each design. There would most likely be a few cookies leftover, but that would mean we could snack on the raw dough while we wait for the cheesecake to bake.
From there, you can use your favorite cheesecake recipe pour on top of the crust. The original user opted for a no-bake filling, but I used Delish’s classic cheesecake recipe for seemingly obvious reasons. After an hour and a half of baking, an hour of cooling, and then allowing the cheesecake to set in the fridge overnight, it was finally ready to unveil.
And…I should have just followed @thesqueakymixer’s recipe. This recipe definitely doesn’t work well with a standard cheesecake filling; the moisture leeched into the cookies and left them soggy and mushy. The texture was a dealbreaker for several Delish team members.
But it wasn’t a total wash. It almost tasted like the raw version we grew up loving—so if that’s the way you normally like to eat these cookies, it’s worth trying it this way. But for anybody who wants to try the TikTok trend for themselves, don’t do what I did. Just follow the recipe as written.
Editorial Assistant
Gabby Romero is Delish’s editorial assistant, where she writes stories about the latest TikTok trends, develops recipes, and answers any and all of your cooking-related questions. She loves eating spicy food, collecting cookbooks, and adding a mountain of Parmesan to any dish she can.
