One of My New Favorite Things...

So I've been on a little baking hiatus, I think it's having a 7 month old who still isn't sleeping through the night, so it makes things like baking sound exhausting and impossible. But finally the other day I baked! I made two things, one was a failure and one was a giant success! The failure, well, I will make it again and post when it's a success so let's not even go there. But my success, well let's talk about it:)

My past few posts have been of sugar cookies. I've been tying out a few different recipes trying to get just the right one. However, all of them have been good in their own delicious and different way. I found a recipe for cream cheese sugar cookies which had 8 oz of cream cheese in the batter-in the words of Ina, "How bad can that be?!" Well it wasn't bad at all, in fact, it was absolutely delicious, so delicious that I think it will be my new go to recipe. The recipe calls for baking powder but the cookies still held their shape pretty well. Now here's a few twists I added to the recipe...

The recipe calls for a teaspoon of almond extract. I've had for a while a bakery emulsion called "Princess Cake and Cookie". It adds a light citrus, buttery, nutty taste. It's delicious. So I added a teaspoon of that instead of the almond and I made a cream cheese frosting. I will add the frosting recipe below-it turned out really good! I made these for a get together with the girls on my mom's side, I had a cousin tell me they were the best sugar cookies she's had. They are pretty dang good. They would be great cookies to leave out for Santa or to take to a cookie swap!

Cream Cheese Cookie Cut-outs
from Karen's Cookies

• 1 cup butter
• 1 8-oz package cream cheese
• 1 ½ cups granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• ½ tsp. almond extract
• 3 ½ cups flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder

Beat butter and cream cheese until well combined. Add sugar; beat until fluffy. Add egg, vanilla and almond extract; beat well. In a small bowl, combine flour and baking powder. Add dry ingredients to cream cheese mixture; beat until well mixed. Divide dough in half. Wrap each half in plastic wrap and refrigerate several hours.

Preheat oven to 375°. Roll dough to ¼ inch thickness. Into desired shapes and place on parchment lined cookie sheets. Bake 8-10 minutes, or until edges are lightly browned. (very large cookies may take longer to bake)

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 stick of butter, softened
8 oz cream cheese
4-5 cups of powdered sugar
pinch of salt
vanilla bean paste
couple tablespoons heavy cream

Blend cream cheese, salt, and butter until creamy. Add powdered sugar to desired consitency. Add vanilla bean paste (or just vanilla). After everything is all creamy and yummy add a little bit of heavy cream. Don't whip it, just mix it in on low speed until mixed in well.