Classic Cream Cheese Cutout Cookies

Looking for a classic, foolproof cream cheese cutout cookie recipe? Look no further. These cutout cookies hold their shape when baked, they’re sweet, tender, and tasty, and most important, children love them. More to the point, children love making them. The dough can be made days in advance and stashed in the fridge. The recipe yields about 50 cookies, perfect for gifting for the holiday season!

There is a woman here in town who, I have no doubt, would defeat Bobby Flay in a Christmas-cookie throw down. Her name is Kelly, and I met her this past summer at a lawn-games Olympics party. After one bite of her legendary cookies, I immediately enlisted her to make a batch for a similarly themed neighborhood gathering. The cookies were the hit of the evening. (Sorry Simone.)

I’ve never asked Kelly for her recipe—I sense it’s treasured—but at one point while we were talking, she let on that cream cheese was the secret. In preparation for holiday cookie season, I did a teensy, teensy bit of research online and found a recipe that yields a cookie not quite as beautiful as Kelly’s, but equally delicious — they hold their shape when baked, they’re sweet, tender, and tasty, and most important, the children love them.

More to the point, the children love making them, which I confess do not. Rolling out dough to a precise thickness, tinting icing to an un-garish hue, piping of any sort—it’s just not in my wheelhouse.

Alas. One day I hope to embrace the challenge of Christmas-cookie baking. For now, I’ll continue a newfound tradition, which requires a neighborhood child at least 9-years of age, preferably one named Jane with the most adorable freckles speckling her face. Last Thursday, I handed over the rolling and cutting and decorating reigns to Jane and did my best to stay out of the way.

There was flour everywhere. There were children sitting—standing!—on the table. Not a single cookie’s thickness matched another’s. It took every ounce of restraint not to intervene. I sipped my wine and occupied myself with the dishes and sweeping and tidying. Let it go, I kept telling myself, let it go. And I did. And the cookies—despite the varying thicknesses, the several decapitated snowmen, the many wingless angels—were delicious.

This dough, I find, is best divided into four portions. I let the children tackle three that evening, and during nap time today, I spent some time with the fourth. As noted, piping and tinting are not my thing, but I can handle a simple royal icing, and I do love festive, decorative sprinkles.

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