This post is also available in / Esta entrada también está disponible en ESPAÑOL (SPANISH)

Here is a variation on our usual holiday sugar cookies. I wasn’t sure about trying this recipe, when you need to bake for the holidays you want to use your old reliable recipes, right? But the addition of cream cheese in the recipe was appealing so I decided to give it a try.  It is stickier that the regular sugar cookie dough, so I prepared the dough one afternoon and left it in the fridge overnight. I had no problem rolling it and cutting out the shapes.

I divided the dough into three parts and added pink food coloring to one, green to the other and left the third part color free, I wrapped each part in plastic and placed them in the refrigerator. When I was ready to bake, I rolled and cut one color first, while leaving the others in the fridge to keep the dough chilled.

Another tip is, if you have 2 or 3 cookie sheets, cut out the shapes first and place them on your cookie sheets. Put them back in the fridge and use the embossing shapes on the chilled shapes and bake immediately.  If you try to emboss a soft dough you will not get good results.

My final tip, if you are using food coloring:  Don’t roll the dough too thinly, keep the cookies about 1/4 inch thick and keep an eye on them while they are baking.  I found that baking them for exactly 9 minutes cooked them through without browning the sides.  A green cookie with brown edges is not pretty (so I ate those… hehe).

Happy baking!

Helga

Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies

Recipe from All Recipes
Yields: About 72 regular sized cookies

Ingredients:
1 cup white sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon almond extract
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg yolk
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, combine the sugar, butter, cream cheese, salt, almond and vanilla extracts, and egg yolk. Beat until smooth. Stir in flour until well blended. Chill the dough for 8 hours, or overnight.  If you are using food coloring, add it at this point before refrigerating the dough.
2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
3. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thickness, refrigerating remaining dough until ready to use. Cut into desired shapes with lightly floured cookie cutters. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Leave cookies plain for frosting, or brush with slightly beaten egg white and sprinkle with candy sprinkles or colored sugar.
4. Bake for 7 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until light and golden brown. Cool cookies completely before frosting.

Note:

• I used Williams Sonoma Easter Cookie Cutters that were given to me as a gift by family last year.  If you don’t find these, you can use any Easter shaped cookie cutters, and to emboss you can use fondant cutters which are available in small sizes at specialty stores.

© 2011 – 2020, The Foodies’ Kitchen. All rights reserved | Todos los derechos reservados

This post is also available in / Esta entrada también está disponible en ESPAÑOL (SPANISH)