Cream Cheese Cookies

Have you been searching for a melt-in-your-mouth cookie that’s perfectly sweet with just the right note of tang? Say hello to cream cheese cookies. These guys are amazing and they whip up in no time.

These cream cheese cookies will be ready before you know it, so let’s get started.

Ingredients and Preparation

First off, we’re adding one and three-quarter cups of all-purpose flour into a large bowl—that’s 210 grams if you’re weighing it out—half a teaspoon of salt, and half a teaspoon of baking powder. Whisk it out, sift it out, and give it a really quick whisk. Okay, set that aside.

Now you can either plot your stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment or an electric hand mixer in a big bowl—your choice. To this bowl I’m adding half a cup (113 grams) of unsalted room-temperature butter. Room temperature means that you can use your finger to press down with a little bit of force and it’ll make an indent. This is at the very cooler part of room temperature, so I’m going to give it just a bit of a cream to break it up first. If your butter is just like almost melting, that’s too soft; that’s not room temperature.

Now, an equal amount—4 ounces (130 grams)—of room-temperature cream cheese. This is the magical and primary ingredient in cream cheese cookies; it makes them soft and cakey and just like melt-in-your-mouth, slightly tangy, perfectly sweet amazingness. I can’t go on enough about these cookies. I bake a lot of things, but I’ve actually been baking these just for pleasure and giving them out in little boxes like care packages to go because I like them so much. They are the best cookie for me at the moment, but favorites change.

Cream the cream cheese and butter up together, then add one cup (200 grams) of granulated white sugar. Drop it in there, let the mixer run; it’ll get nice and light and fluffy. If you want to, you can give it a little scrape. These are a great cookie to make with kids, by the way, because they’re basically foolproof—just a couple ingredients and two bowls at work, so it’s not gonna be like a crazy cookie.

I’m gonna add in two teaspoons (10 ml) of a nice vanilla and then one room-temperature egg. Mix it up, one more scrape—that’s good. Now we can dump in the dry ingredients. A little word to the wise: this is going to be a very soft cookie dough, but I’m always intrigued by soft cookie doughs because something really interesting is about to happen. My example for that would be crinkle cookies: those cookies have to chill overnight and they’re still soft, but when you bake them up they’re like liquid balls of fudge in the middle and crispy on the outside—they’re so good.

Mix on low until almost combined, then finish it off by hand. Get that paddle out—use your spatula and mix the dough in. See that stuff on the bottom? That’s unmixed. If you didn’t do that you’d have a couple of cookies that would be really melty in the oven and burn.

My dough is all mixed. This is gonna go into the fridge for at least an hour; you could totally make this a day ahead, but an hour should be really fine. I’m gonna warn you, though: when we put these on the cookie sheet your hands will get messy, but it’ll be so worthwhile. Cover it up, into the fridge.

Shaping and Baking

My cookie dough has been chilling for a little bit over an hour. Now we’re going to portion it out, roll it, and bake it. I just want to show you the consistency of the dough: here it looks like normal cookie dough, but once you give it a little roll—oh, that’s actually not bad. Thanks, extra chilling time; you made all the difference.

Portion out roughly two-tablespoon-sized pieces; it could be a little bigger or smaller. Give it a really quick roll just to bring it together so it’s more of a cookie shape. I like to use a triggered ice-cream scoop because it kind of plops out into your hand when it works. Roll, roll, roll, and place them down, giving them at least an inch and a half of distance between them. They don’t spread out very much.

When you bake these cookies up they look a little homely; they’re not like a beautiful shortbread cut cookie or some assembled macaron, so I feel kind of guilty giving them to people, but they’re so delicious I always hope they’ll see beyond the outside and taste the cookie.

Wash your hands and then pop these into the oven at 375 °F for about 10 minutes. They might not seem done, but they’re done. The edges will be a little brown; you can give them an extra minute if you need to, but they’ll continue setting after they come out of the oven. They’ll be melt-in-your-mouth amazingness.

After about 10 minutes in the oven your cookies are gonna look just like this—beautiful little cream cheese pillows. Place them onto a wire rack to finish cooling completely; give them a few minutes to rest on the baking sheet first.

Finishing Touch

Finish them off with just a really light dusting of powdered sugar—you might need like a tablespoon for the whole batch. It just gives you a little bit of contrast and the tiniest bit of extra sweetness. I literally used like two teaspoons.

Take a look at the inside—do you see that? It just dissolves, and the cream cheese, the sugar—so good.