Cream Cheese Cookie with Garam Masala Recipe

These delicious melt-in-your-mouth cream cheese cookies with just a hint of garam masala are perfectly sweet with the tang of cream cheese and an underlying warm spice flavor. 

This easy cookie recipe brings together two of our favorite flavors: cream cheese and garam masala! 

Cream cheese is one of those ingredients that we just can’t resist! If a dessert has cream cheese in them, we are on board! And recently, we got to thinking how Garam Masala would play with cream cheese! And we’re happy to report that the two go well together! 

When thinking about a cream cheese dessert to pair with Garam Masala, this tangy and sweet cream cheese cookie recipe came to mind! It bakes up a soft delicate cookie with addictive flavors!

And this is an easy cookie recipe! Who doesn’t want an easy 5 ingredient cookie recipe (well,  make that 6 ingredients with the Garam Masala) in their cookie repotaire? And this is also an egg-free cookie recipe, if that is a concern in your kitchen.

They’re super simple to make, and it’s EASY to eat more than one!

Ingredients

Cream Cheese. Just straight up cream cheese is all you need. Steer clear of the whipped cream cheese. Bring it out of the fridge 30 - 45 minutes before you make your cookies to soften up enough to cream with the butter and sugar. 

Butter. Just like the cream cheese, straight up butter is all you need. Unsalted butter is better for baking as it allows you to control the total salt in your recipe. And again just like the cream cheese, take the butter out of the fridge 30 - 45 minutes before making your cookies. 

Sugar. This is a cookie recipe without brown sugar. Just plain ol’ granulated sugar works. If brown sugar is all you have, feel free to substitute. But, brown sugar has a bit more moisture than granulated sugar. Add an extra 2 tablespoons of flour to account for that moisture. 

Flour. Just like all the other ingredients, plain white flour is all you need for this recipe! We always encourage you to use the best quality ingredients available to you, but this recipe really doesn’t need anything fancy. 

Salt. Just a dash of salt helps to balance all the other flavors in this cookie recipe. We love Pacific Flake Sea Salt  for all our baking! 

Garam Masala. Garam Masala is a traditional Indian spice blend usually added to meat, fish, and vegetable dishes. A blend of cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, cumin, black pepper, and coriander, we felt this spice blend was just begging to be added to a sweet dish! And the sweetness of the cardamom and cinnamon just blends really well with the tangy cream cheese of this cookie.  

Technique

This cookie batter is soft and sticky and can be just a little tricky to work with. Dampen your hands before rolling out the batter to avoid having the batter stick to your hands. 

We used a cookie press to create a design on our cookies. If your kitchen doesn’t happen to have a cookie press, no worries - use the bottom of a glass or bottle to press a design into your cookies. Or simply roll into a ball and bake! 

Tips for Making the Perfect Cream Cheese Cookie:

• Place cookies on cookie pan at least two inches between each cookie as they will spread quite a bit while baking. 
• Cookies will brown on the bottom, but not necessarily on the top, so watch them for doneness carefully. 
• After baking, allow cookies to cool on the cookie sheet for just about a minute before gently removing them to a rack to cool. They will firm up as they cool. 

Love learning more about spices and how to creatively cook with them? SpiceScription may be for you!