MARY'S BELL COOKIES

Steps:

• Make filling:
• Stir together brown sugar, butter, and 3 tablespoons cherry juice until combined, then stir in pecans. Set cherries aside.
• Make cookies:
• Put oven racks in upper and lower thirds of oven and preheat oven to 350°F.
• Whisk together flour, ginger, baking soda, salt, and coffee.
• Beat together brown sugar and shortening in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, 6 to 8 minutes. Add corn syrup, egg, and cream and beat until combined well.
• Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture, then mix until combined.
• Roll out one third of dough between 2 sheets of wax paper to 1/8-inch thick (about 15 by 11 inches). Chill dough on wax paper on a baking sheet until slightly firm, about 10 minutes. Cut out as many cookies as possible with cutter and transfer with a metal spatula to 2 ungreased large baking sheets, spacing them 1/2 inch apart. Roll out, chill, and cut remaining dough in same manner. Reserve scraps.
• Center 1/2 teaspoon nut filling on lower half of each cookie, then, using spatula, fold sides in toward center to form a cone. (Dough may crack along fold; part of filling will be exposed.)
• Stem and quarter cherries. Place 1 cherry quarter over exposed filling on each cookie to make bell clapper.
• Bake cookies, switching position of sheets halfway through baking, until edges are pale golden, 12 to 16 minutes total. Transfer to racks to cool completely.
• Reroll scraps, then make more cookies in same manner (reroll only twice), baking them on cooled sheets.