Cream cheese biscuits

For reasons I won’t bore you with, it’s not been a great start to the year so I felt justified in ‘buying me a little happy’.  This manifested itself in an Oxo Good GripsCookie Press. Regular readers of the blog will know that I’ve never had much success in piping biscuit dough and usually end up spooning it onto the baking sheet instead, but with this lovely bit of kit my luck has changed!

The recipe is from the instruction book that comes with the cookie press and Mr CC declared them the best biscuits I have ever made.  I think he’s right.  They are lovely: crisp, buttery, flavoursome and small enough that there’s no shame in eating several!

Because they are small and thin they crisp up quickly from the oven.  We ate some warm and they had an almost nutty flavour, which was surprising given that they don’t contain any nuts.  When cool that nuttiness goes, but the cream cheese gives a boost to the flavour; you wouldn’t know they contained cream cheese but it does add something.

The recipe said the yield would be about eight dozen biscuits.  I never have a lot of luck in getting the suggested amount thus expected to get half that.  I got well over 100!  It is the recipe that just keeps on giving!  The shape looked so crisp unbaked that I thought I would lose all that definition on baking:

But guess what?  They kept their shape:

Ingredients

230g unsalted butter, at room temperature
85g cream cheese – I used Philadelphia
250g caster sugar
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
310g plain flour
½ teaspoon cinnamon

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/gas mark 4.

Line baking sheets with baking paper or non stick foil – you will need about six, but I only had three so re-used them as the batches finished baking.

Beat together the butter and cream cheese until combined.

Add the sugar, egg yolk and vanilla and beat until combined.

Weigh out the flour and cinnamon.

Gradually beat into the butter mixture.

At this point you can spoon small teaspoons full of the dough onto the baking sheet, but I used my cookie press.  Fill the cookie press with dough (you will have to refill about four times) and press your cookies onto the prepared baking sheet.  They don’t spread a lot so place them as close together as the cookie press will allow.

Bake for 15 minutes, turning the trays halfway through the baking time.  The biscuits are ready when they are a light golden colour.

Leave to cool for five minutes on the tray before transferring to a wire rack and leaving to cool completely.

If using a cookie press this recipe will make about 100 biscuits.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.