Perfect Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies

Let’s kick off cookies’ biggest time of year with the best of all Christmas cookie recipes: Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies. Soft, tender, and surprisingly easy to make, these are THE ideal cutout cookie, for the holidays…or anytime you need a soft, chewy, and utterly perfect cut out cookie.

This melt in your mouth cream cheese cookie recipe has been my go-to roll out cookie dough since well before I was tall enough to preheat the oven.

Ingredients:

For the Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies:

1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg at room temperature

2 ounces reduced-fat cream cheese at room temperature (do not use fat free)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

1 teaspoon lemon zest

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

For the Frosting:

3 cups powdered sugar

3-4 tablespoons milk

2 tablespoons light corn syrup

3/4 teaspoon almond extract

For Decorating:

Food coloring

Sprinkles

Colored sugar

Other decorations as desired