Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies are based on a recipe from America’s Text Kitchen where they combined cream cheese and vegetable oil to create cookies with chewy centers and crispy edges.
Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies Flavor
The America’s Test Kitchen is perfect as is, but I tend to change it up anyway. In the cookies pictured here, I added a little cake batter extract (formerly known as McCormick Imitation Vanilla & Butter Nut extract). It gives the cookies a bit of a yellow tint and adds a flavor people can’t quite pinpoint. Unfortunately, the special extract is not easy to find and you might have to order it. Or just leave it out completely, because the cookies are still great when made with the two teaspoons of vanilla.
The secret ingredient isn’t so much the flavoring, but the combination of cream cheese and vegetable oil which gives the sugar cookies such a great texture with lots of crevices and cracks. People often tell me the cookies remind them of the ones from Potbelly Sandwiches.
Recipe
My New Favorite Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (I used unbleached) (315 grams)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder Rumford is my favorite
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar (300 grams)
- 2 oz cream cheese cut into about 8 pieces
- 6 tablespoons of butter 84 grams
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil canola or flavorless
- 1 large egg at room temperature
- A tablespoon of whole milk I have forgotten this on occasion
- 1 3/4 teaspoons of good vanilla extract
- 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of McCormick vanilla & butternut extract or Watkins Vanilla Nut or another brand if you know of one
- Extra sugar for putting on top OR colored sugar
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat.
- Mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together and set aside.
- Put the 1 1/2 cups sugar and the cream cheese in large mixing bowl. Melt the butter in the microwave and pour the warm melted butter over sugar and cream cheese, then whisk to combine. Don’t worry about stray lumps of cream cheese (though I haven’t had any). Whisk in oil until well incorporated. Then add the egg, milk, vanilla and butternut extract. Whisk until smooth. Add flour mixture and mix until combined.
- Using a slightly heaping tablespoon, roll dough onto about 24 balls. Arrange balls 2 1/2 inches apart on the baking sheets. Using the bottom of a 1/4 cup measure, press down slightly — not too much, just enough to flatten the top somewhat.
- Sprinkle regular or colored sugar over the cookies and bake one sheet at a time for 11-13 minutes or until edges just start to brown (turn the sheet around halfway through baking). Let them cool on the cookie sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.
Anna
Good question! I stick with 350, but I can’t give you an exact time because I’ve changed ovens over the years and it varies. An estimate would be somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes.
I lost my Silpat so I almost always use parchment paper. I also like nonstick foil.
Teri
Anna,
When you bake them as 4 oz. cookies, what temperature and about how long do you bake them for? Also do you prefer a heavy duty cookie sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat mat?
Thank you!
Sue
I have been seeing attractive pumpkin shaped sugar cookies in stores, coffee shops etc. I’ve really been wanting one but would rather have a home made one. I think this cookie with orange sprinkles would satisfy that craving!
Anna
Karen, did you register? I think you have to register to login.
Karen Schmidt-Dill
The America’s Test Kitchen will not let me open the video for the sugar cookies. I don’t like the crispy kind so am looking forward to trying these more chewy ones.
Anna
I really thought the cream cheese would make them cakey, but the small amount combined with the oil and butter really does make them chewy.
Gloria
I’ll need to check out that video. I’ve never heard of cream cheese in a sugar cookie, but I’d give it a try ! I love cream cheese.
Darlene
Thanks for the tip to watch the video – it was really interesting how they have figured out the perfect combination of butter, oil, and cream cheese to produce the chewy texture. I love a chewy center with a crisp edge & will definitely give these a try!