These Easy And Customizable Cookies Start With Cake Mix And Cream Cheese

Cake mix has many creative uses besides its intended dessert, from pie crusts to waffles. If you can't decide between cake or cookies, why not have a bit of both by transforming your cake mix into cookies with the help of cream cheese. Cake mix provides the dry ingredients and a base of sugar and flavors that takes the work out of making cookies from scratch. Like cake mix, cream cheese has many creative uses of its own, and it brings thickening, binding, and flavoring powers to cake mix cookies. Considering cream cheese frosting is a favorite for many different types of cakes, it'll likewise give that balance of dairy richness and tang to any flavor of cake mix cookies you plan on making.

While a typical cake mix requires three eggs, half a cup of oil, and a cup of water to transform into a thin batter, cookie dough requires vastly different ratios. Swapping the water for an 8-ounce block of cream cheese helps thicken the cake mix into the consistency of cookie dough, but you should also swap the oil for butter. Since cookies don't need to rise like a cake, you only need one egg for cake mix cream cheese cookies.

Just as with most scratch-made cookie recipes, you'll want to cream the butter with cream cheese before adding the egg. Add the cake mix gradually, stirring until you've reached a thick cookie dough. Bake your cookies and you're all set.

Cream cheese cake mix cookies will be on the softer side, but you'll still get those nice crispy golden edges. For the best results, you should bring the egg, butter, and cream cheese to room temperature before creaming them. This will render a fluffy wet ingredient mixture which equates to a nice rise and optimum cookie texture. Another important step to take with cookie dough is to chill it for about 30 minutes before baking. Chilling the dough gives it time to develop flavor and firm up so it's easier to form into cookie balls. Most importantly, chilled dough safeguards against flat, thin cookies because it prevents the dough from spreading too much as it bakes.

The best part about making cookies with cake mix and cream cheese is that the recipe is completely customizable. Not only can you use any flavor of cake mix you want, but you can further customize the cookies with add-ins. For chocolate lovers, you could make a double chocolate cookie by using your favorite chocolate cake mix and semi-sweet chocolate chips. Following the same method, you can make chocolate chip cookies with yellow cake mix, semi-sweet chocolate chips, and toasted pecans. Red velvet cookies would pair well with white chocolate chips. Make white chocolate macadamia cookies with white cake mix, white chocolate chips, and macadamia nuts. Finally, add cinnamon and vanilla extract to white cake mix and finish with cinnamon sugar dust for cakey snickerdoodle cookies.