Cream Cheese Cutouts

Adapted from: Taste of Home Best Loved Cookies & Bars 2008
Made by: Cathy and Carol

This is another one of the cookies we made for our cookie gifts. We wanted to venture out of our comfort zone this year and did 2 types of cutout cookies. Cutouts are hard! You have to have the right consistency and temperature, otherwise it will be mush or hard as a rock.

This is one of 3 refrigerator cookies we made. We made the batter on Saturday and my sister came back on Sunday to help (more like she did all the rolling). Yes, I'm going to give her credit for that. I was fed up with the rolling. She seemed to have a knack for it. Me, not so much. I got frustrated since the gingerbread cutouts dough was so sticky, but I was hesitant to add more flour. But of course, she saved the day and rolled out most of the dough.


Ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
1 package (3 ounces) cream cheese, softened (we had bricks, so we cut out 3 oz)
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
FROSTING:
2 cups confectioners' sugar
1/3 cup butter, softened (5 tablespoons)
2 tablespoons milk
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Food coloring, optional
Assorted sprinkles, optional

Directions:
1. In a large bowl, cream the butter, cream cheese and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Combine flour and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture just until blended. Cover and refrigerate for 1-2 hours or until easy to handle. I refrigerated overnight. It was pretty hard at that time. I recommend splitting into 2 balls and wrapping the entire thing in saran wrap instead of leaving it in a bowl if refrigerating overnight.
2. Preheat oven to 375°.
3. On a lightly floured surface, roll dough to 1/8-in. thickness. Cut with cookie cutters dipped in flour. Bake at for 7-8 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Cool for 1 minute before removing to wire racks.
4. In a small bowl, beat frosting ingredients until smooth. Add food coloring if desired. Decorate cookies with frosting and sprinkles as desired.

We definitely did not get 7 dozen cookies from this recipe. We got more like 3 dozen. We didn't really count.

The flavor was much like shortbread, but not as flaky.

As you can see from the picture, we made only 2 colors of frosting. We should have had white and yellow, but oh well. It's done and in my stomach now.