Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hello everyone and happy Sunday! Hopefully everyone got to sleep in and was able to spend some quality time with family, friends or just relaxing. Can you do any of that for me too? Our kids are slowly boycotting sleep and they have me outnumbered. People with more than two kids, I give you props. Go you.

Today I want to share a recipe that I found on Pinterest and I thought would be perfect to use up some cream cheese that's best before date was quickly approaching. I have never made cookies with cream cheese but was definitely intrigued and thought it was worth a try.

Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies (original recipe)                       

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup white sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
1 egg
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. cornstarch
1/4 tsp. salt
2 cups chocolate chips

1. Cream butter and cream cheese together until smooth.  Add sugars and beat until fluffy and well combined. Then add vanilla and egg and beat until combined. Scrape the sides of the bowl occasionally, and between additions.

2. In a separate bowl combine the flour, baking soda, cornstarch and salt. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients until combined. I found the dough didn't come together very well, it was especially dry.

3. Add in chocolate chips and stir until distributed without over mixing. I used semi-sweet chocolate chips but would definitely recommenced milk chocolate or M&M's like the original recipe. I just used what I had on hand. Chill dough for 30 minutes.

4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and scoop dough onto cookie sheet with an ice cream scoop. I had to flatten them a little because they baked weird when I let them drop. Bake 8-10 minutes, then let rest on the cookie sheet for an additional 2 minutes.

I have to say, they looked fantastic from the original recipe, but mine did not turn out as nice.  They did not spread out or crisp up at all, staying pretty much how they were dropped. And they were "soft", but extremely dry and crumbly. Not what I'm looking for in a cookie, especially a chocolate chip cookie. When I think of soft I think chewy, which I know is different, but that's what I associate with soft. These were not chewy, at all.
 

I want to chock this up to baker error, because they really didn't turn out that great. There was not much sweetness to the cookie, which could have been because I used a semi sweet chocolate instead of a milk chocolate. There wasn't a lot of sugar in the recipe, so pretty sure a chocolate swap would have made a big difference in the taste. I have found that some recipes make the dough a little less sweet to accommodate the chocolate in the recipe. How many times can I say chocolate in one paragraph? Holy guys.

But I can't figure out why they ended up dry and crumbly. Baker error must have been my issue. Even my tried and true freezer solution didn't work guys. They were even worse straight from the freezer, so I ended up tossing them. If I'm going to eat a cookie, it's got to be a good cookie. No half way on that.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about with my "freezer solution", just toss the cooled cookies in the freezer for a few days and then try one straight from the freezer. Guys, seriously this will change your life. The right cookie recipe will go from good to super-amazing once it come out of your freezer. You can find the cookies I recommend for this here: Chocolate Cake Cookies; Mint Chocolate Pudding Cookies and Chocolate Coconut Balls.

Has anyone made cream cheese cookies before and had them turn out? I am still really interested in the idea of cream cheese in cookies, but now I'm a little shy of trying again. Please share if you have!

Kerby 

Linking to:
eighteen25 - Show and Tell #16