Recipe: Ooey Gooey Butter Cookies

What are Ooey Gooey Butter Cookies? Small, personal-sized fun cakes? Flattened beignets? The reason your Aunt Judy always has powdered sugar lodged in the corners of her mouth during family gatherings while she tells you about her sugar-free diet?

These cookies reside in a category all their own, namely due to the addition of cream cheese, which most traditional cookies don’t typically require.

Bowls by Nadia Elgan @habibiceramics 

They’re surprisingly easy to whip together though, with just minimal effort required to smash the dough balls down before baking. If there are children in your life, children are experts at smashing balls of dough down, and do a much better job at this than any adults ever could. Just make sure you don’t let them near the oven, as many 4-year olds seem inclined to put your cell phone and one of their shoes in there to bake as well.

 

If Gooey Butter Cookies (you can leave off the Ooey part once you’ve made them a few times and are more intimately acquainted) had an instagram account, it would have a blue check mark and 80,000 followers. The cookies would take relentless selfies, and they’d troll savory food accounts with comments like “Ew, looks like there’s too much cheese on that.” or “Did you know tomatoes are actually a fruit? So that’s not really a lasagna, it’s more of a pie or a cobbler.”

Now that you have a thorough understanding of what these cookies are all about, it’s time to do some baking!!!

4.5 cups all purpose flour

4 tsp baking powder

2 tsp salt

1 lb cream cheese, room temp

½ lb butter, room temp

3 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

powdered sugar, for baking

Cream butter, cream cheese, and sugar until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla, mix to combine. Combine dry ingredients, and add them. Mix just until combined thoroughly. 

Using a 1oz ice cream scoop, scoop cookies, roll in powdered sugar and space evenly on a parchment lined sheet pan. Press cookies into a 3” round, sieve more powdered sugar on top, and bake at 350°F till edges are golden blonde (about 7-8 minutes). These cookies don't spread, they puff/rise.