Monday, April 13, 2009

Cream cheese sugar cookies

Holy smokes, these cookies are good! I was looking for a recipe similar to the Lofthouse sugar cookies - the super soft, yummy ones sold at Wal-Mart. This isn't them; but if anything, it's a million times better!! My plan was to do cutout cookies, but I got lazy and dropped them instead.


INGREDIENTS

1½ cups sugar
1 cup unsalted butter
1 (8 oz) pkg cream cheese
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
½ tsp almond extract (I didn't have this and used total 1 1/2 tsp vanilla instead)
3½ cups flour
1 tsp baking powder


DIRECTIONS

In a mixing bowl cream sugar, butter and cream cheese until fluffy.

Add egg and flavorings; beat till smooth.

Stir together the flour and baking powder; add to creamed mixture and mix thoroughly.

Shape as desired (drop or cutout). Place on ungreased cookie sheet (parchment paper is great to use) and bake in a 375° oven 8-10 minutes. Watch for the edges to just barely begin to brown if you like a moist cookie. Cool and frost.


FOR DROP COOKIES

No need to chill dough. Drop by the tablespoon and flattened them. You can use a fork (as with peanut butter cookies) or the bottom of a glass that has been buttered and dipped in granulated sugar. It made them about the size of store bought cookies and I got right at two dozen.


FOR CUT-OUT COOKIES

Chill dough for a few hours/overnight. Dust surface with a mixture of ½ powered sugar and ½ flour. Roll dough ¼ to ½ inch thick depending on your preference, then cut into desired shapes.

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ICING

4 cups powered sugar, sifted
4 Tbsp softened butter
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg white
¼ cup milk/cream

Combine egg white and milk, set aside.

Beat together powered sugar, butter and flavorings.

Add small amounts of the milk mixture until icing is spreading consistency. Tint with desired colors.

2 comments:

ancameni said...

I absolutely love the store bought cookies and tried several recipes. Once i accepted the fact the base cookie is soft, cake like and rather bland in taste (compared to the usual sugar cookie) i realized that it had to be a cream cheese cookie. I tried 2 other recipes before yours i have to admit,.. and i should tried this one first. I only made one substitution, i used cake flour instead of all-purpose since i wanted to keep the cookie soft.
Your recipe is awesome. It is soft, great taste. It tastes so great that my family even eats them without frosting. I used a tablespoon sized cookie scoop and and got about 4 dozen cookies. Baking time in my oven was about 9 minutes.
Thanks

Anonymous said...

Aww, thanks!! I LOVE getting comments on my recipes!! :)