Cream Cheese Sugar Cookie Dough

Cream Cheese Sugar Cookie Dough
3 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
4 0z room temp cream cheese
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup room tempt butter
1 egg (room temp too)
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Stir with a whisk to lighten the flour up and break up any clumps. With a mixer beat (medium high) butter and cream cheese together then add sugar and mix till kinda fluffy. Then beat in egg and vanilla just until combined. Turn down mixer to a medium low speed and slowly add in the flour mixture. Separate your dough into two parts and then put your dough into plastic containers and seal. Leave dough in the frig for 2 hours. Roll out and cut. Cook at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. I highly recommend unsalted butter not margarine. Margarine has too much water in it and your cookies spread out and flatten when they cook. If you use salted butter omit the salt in your recipe.

If you want to make ginger bread replace 1/4 cup of flour with coco powder and sprinkle in 1/2 tsp of pumpkin spice. I like mine really spicy so I use 1 tsp of pumpkin spice. To sprinkle on colored sugar in a heart shape cut out a heart from a small sheet of wax paper. Lay on top of cookie and sprinkle on sugar. I kinda patted mine down and added on another layer of sugar just so the red would stand out more and then ripped away the paper real fast so the excesses sugar did not jack up my lines.

Other variations.

Maple-Walnut cookies
Prepare dough above but add 2 cups finely chopped walnuts to flour mixture and 1 tsp maple extract to butter mixture. Shape into 1 inch balls and bake at 15 minutes. Roll warm balls into powder sugar.

Pecan Bars
Prepare dough above, and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 15 x 10 pan with wax paper over lapping pan for easy removal, lightly spray bottom and sides with cooking spray. Press dough into bottom of pan and bake for 20 minutes till lightly browned. Combine 2 eggs, 1 cup of firmly packed brown sugar, 2/3 cup light corn syrup, 1/4 cup melted butter and 1 tsp of vanilla. Stir until well blended, add 3 cups of chopped pecans. Spread nut mixture evenly over warm crust. Bake an additional 20 minutes. Allow to cool completely. Using wax paper remove from pan, and cut into bars.