Raspberry Cheesecake Cookies

Now, when I first started my blog, I had been planning on making raspberry cheesecake cookies for a coworker for her birthday. I was unable to get raspberry chips or find raspberry extract. But while going food shopping about a month ago, with the holidays around the corner, ShopRite must have decided to whip out their "exotic" extracts and I finally found raspberry extract.

This recipe was the other one I was thinking about entering in the cookie contest. But everyone at the office has said to enter my hot chocolate cookies. Guess we'll see when I bring these to work. It looks like I have two different cookies but I just used pink food dye to make them look more raspberry-ish I guess. But that didn't work too well. They look more like red velvet cookies... Oh well. My dad said they still tasted like raspberries so I'll consider that a win. I doubled the recipe, but the recipe below does not reflect that as usual!

 

Raspberry Cheesecake Cookies

 

Ingredients:

2 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup butter, softened [not melted]

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 package [8 oz] cream cheese, softened

1 tablespoon pure raspberry extract

1 cup fresh raspberries

white chocolate chips

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a small bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Set aside. 

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in one egg and vanilla. Gradually blend in the dry ingredients.

Whip the softened cream cheese and one egg until blended and smooth. Add the fresh raspberries and blend together, then stir into the dough. [The addition of the second egg causes the cookies to be more cake-like. Use only one egg if you want less cake-like cookies.] Add preferred amount of white chocolate chips to dough.

Spoon a tablespoon of dough onto baking sheets and bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown.