These Pie Crust Mini Turnover Cookies With Jam are an easy-to-make dessert when you have a sweet tooth. The recipe comes from Transylvania. The pie crust dough is rolled out, cut into small round shapes, and filled with your favorite jam. Delicious and easy to make!
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Pie Crust Mini Turnover Cookies With Jam
This is an old family little treasure, coming from my paternal German-Romanian grandmother who lived in Transylvania.
I have only a few recipes from Herta, my grandmother, but plenty of warm memories of her baking. These Pie Crust Mini Turnover Cookies With Jam are some of my favorite cookies she used to make.
These cookies are easy to put together, delicious, and versatile. The best part is that you can use the dough to make pie crust.
My research showed me that most of the Romanian pie crust recipes are made with vinegar and water or wine, probably because the acidity from the vinegar inhibits the gluten from developing; therefore, the crust ends up being more tender.
In my opinion, it is a reliable recipe for producing a good pie crust. It uses just a tiny amount of vinegar(half in my recipe) compared to the amount of water in the dough, but it is just enough to make a difference in the finished crust.
I recently saw some American articles saying that adding vinegar or lemon juice to a dough doesn’t do anything to it. As much as I respect these opinions, I wonder why people used vinegar in their pie crusts for hundreds of years.
I know that the vinegar added to the recipes was and still is very popular in many Eastern European countries; therefore, if you have a good explanation for why vinegar is used, I am open to the conversation.
You can make this dough by hand or in a food processor. Both methods will give you good results.
Also, in my opinion, you can use either white vinegar or apple cider vinegar in this recipe. You won’t be able to smell or taste either vinegar in the finished crust.

After the dough is rolled, cut it with a water glass or a round cookie cutter, then place a dollop of jam in the middle.
My grandmother used to fold the cookie in half and seal it with a fork. Relatively easy to make, the cookies are a delicious snack or dessert to have around.
Dust these babies with some powder sugar and serve. They are great with coffee, fantastic for holidays, or just lazy Sundays with your family.
The cookie’s sweetness comes only from the jam inside and the powder sugar on top because the dough has no sugar at all. Enjoy and let me know if you liked them!
If you liked this recipe, you might also enjoy these Czech Bars or my favorite bars, Saxon Walnut Rose Hip Jam Bars. They are both delicious and very close to my heart.
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Pie Crust Mini Turnover Cookies With Jam

This Pie Crust Mini Turnover Cookies with jam are an easy way to make dessert when you have a sweet tooth. The recipe comes from Transylvania. The pie crust dough is rolled out, cut into small round shapes, and filled with your favorite jam. Delicious and easy to make!
Ingredients
- 3 1/4 cups/14oz/400 g all purpose flour
- 8.8oz/2 sticks/250 g cold butter (chopped into small pieces)
- 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
- 4 tablespoons cold water
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2-3 tablespoons powder sugar
- 16 oz/453g fruit jam(plums, apples, strawberries, raspberries etc)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F/180C.
- Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper and set it aside.
- The dough can be made by hand or in a food processor.
- If you're doing it by hand, sift the flour in a bowl and add the cold chopped butter.
- Use a pastry blender to cut the butter into the flour until you obtain pea-size crumbles.
- Over the crumbles, add water, salt, and vinegar and mix with your hands until you get a smooth dough.
- If you are using a food processor, add the butter to the flour and pulse 3-4 times until the dough looks like pea-size crumbles.
- Add water, salt, and vinegar and pulse until you obtain a smooth dough.
- Roll it on a floured surface to about 1/4 inch thickness and cut circles with a water glass or a round cookie cutter.
- Place a dollop of jam in the middle and fold the dough in half.
- Use a fork to press the edges of the cookie together and place it on the cookie sheet.
- When all cookies are formed, bake them at 350F/180C for about 17-20 mins.
- Remove from the oven and let them cool on a metal rack.
- Dust powder sugar over each cookie.
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Nutrition Information:
Yield:
24Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 269Total Fat: 17gSaturated Fat: 11gTrans Fat: 1gUnsaturated Fat: 5gCholesterol: 45mgSodium: 163mgCarbohydrates: 27gFiber: 1gSugar: 11gProtein: 2g
Kelsey De Jong
Sunday 29th of August 2021
Can I use a pie crust box mix?
Katie M.
Wednesday 24th of November 2021
@Kelsey De Jong, Why not? I do all the time. Since I'm single, I use a box of Jiffy pie crust mix. I just made two mini-squash pies and used the leftover for "turnovers" (we call them "brambles").
Randi
Thursday 14th of January 2021
THANK YOU SO MUCH for the answer. I have been searching for a recipe like this that looked goo. hehehe FOUND YOU :)
The Bossy Kitchen
Friday 15th of January 2021
You are very welcome.
Randi
Thursday 14th of January 2021
Is it wine vinegar or just white vinegar? I clicked on you list that took me to amazon to buy vinegar and it was just white vinegar. I keep the regular white at all times but not the wine vinegar. PLEASE LET ME KNOW THANKS
The Bossy Kitchen
Thursday 14th of January 2021
White vinegar is ok to use, don’t worry about red vinegar. Use what you have, this is what my grandma would do too! :-)
Linda Gundros
Wednesday 25th of September 2019
I just had these cookies and the dough used was refrigerated store bought pie crust( 2 rolls per box). They were filled with homemade strawberry fig jam! Delicious!
Snjezana
Sunday 24th of June 2018
I tried making these cookies and the dough was breaking all the time as I was working with it in a cookie form.... where did I go wrong?
The Bossy Kitchen
Thursday 28th of June 2018
I am not sure why it happened to you. The ratio between the butter and the flour is great to create a smooth dough that is easy to work with. It never happened to me. How did you measure the flour? In cups or in grams? Sometimes you might get more flour if you use cups, depends on how you measure it. Unfortunately, most Americans use cups because they think it is easy, but a scale is more reliable. Grams or ounces are the way to go. This would be my explanation...