4-ingredient cream cheese cookies.

Quick, easy, minimal, fun. Flour, cream cheese, butter, sugar. Full stop.

And exclamation mark!

I'm gonna bypass all the boring stuff and fast forward to the point I retrieved these babies from the oven. And then maybe a little bit more to after I let them cool for a bit all the while inhaling the surrounding air. You know how cookies are when they're freshly baked - crunchy on the outside while the insides are meltingly soft. A cookie's greatest moment of glory in it's ephemeral lifespan. Now apply imagination of said cookies to these. The crunchiness of shortbread and tenderness of the softest sugar cookie (no doubt the work of the cream cheese) with the toasty aroma of sweet mild cheesecake. Bonus points for the kawaii square shape that resembles pats of butter and cream cheese.

4-Ingredient Cream Cheese Cookies
adapted from here

150g all-purpose flour
50g cream cheese
50g butter
50g sugar

Cream the cream cheese, butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Stir in the flour. Gather the dough into a ball, wrap in clingwrap and chill for at least an hour until the dough has firmed up. If making the cookies into squares like I did, you should flatten the dough out into a sheet before chilling so that it's easier to roll out later.

If you're making circular cookies, pinch of pieces of dough, roll into balls and place on a prepared baking sheet. Flatten slightly. If you're making square cookies, roll out the sheet of chilled dough until it's roughly half-an-inch thick. You can choose to roll the dough out thinner or thicker depending on your preference but remember to adjust your baking time accordingly! Cut the dough into squares and place the squares of dough on your prepared baking sheet, spacing them at least 1 cm apart. The cookies will hardly expand. Chill cookies while you preheat the oven.

Bake at 170C for 12 to 18 minutes. If you like your cookies softer with the dough still a bit raw in the middle, go for the shorter baking time and if you like your cookies crunchy all the way through, go for the longer end. I was aiming for the former but they are so much more fragrant when their tops have browned a little!

Cool on baking sheet and attack while still warm!