Cinnamon Bun Sugar Cookies

These cookies not only taste spectacular but they hold their shape beautifully!

Beautiful marbling!

I take Karen's Cookies' Cream Cheese Cookie Cut-outs recipe (bottom of page 2) and made the dough.  Then when dough is all prepared I shake cinnamon all over the top of the dough.

I then mix this in with my hands being careful not to overmix as I want to see it marbled throughout the dough rather than just a brown mixture.

Next, I roll out the dough to 1/4" thickness using the slats my husband made for just this purpose.  Similar items can be bought online or there are those rolling pin markers that can be purchased as well.

You can see the lovely marbling as the dough is rolled out.  This is why you don't want to overmix too much once you add the cinnamon. Basically, when mixing, you want to stop once all the dry sections are gone.

After you cut out your shapes, you bake the cookies. Karen recommends 375F for 8-10 mins.  I always bake at 350F for 12-15 minutes for my regular cookies but find that when you add cream cheese to your dough that you can basically throw your usual timings out the window!  They don't really crisp up like regular cookies do.  The edges will brown but the center part seems to stay soft (and can break if you aren't careful).

Here's what I do:

1. Bake at 350F for 12-15 minutes
2. Check on the cookies: are the edges starting to brown yet? If not, put in for another 3 minutes. If they are browned, take them out and transfer to a cooling rack after about 10 minutes.
3. Once I've finished baking all my batches I will then take those cookies, on cooling racks, and place these racks into my half-sheet baking trays and put them into the oven just after I turn it off.  I leave the door open just a crack and, with their bottoms now exposed to the heat, leave the cookies in there for a good 30+ minutes.

Here they are, all cooled and
ready for decorating!

I know this all sounds crazy and way too much work... but wait till you taste them!  I do all this extra stuff because I don't like how soft the cookies are when they are just baked the regular way.  If you notice browning on the bottoms of the cookies, remember the taste of a cinnamon roll and the bits of sugar that are a little brown and how tasty they are... These brown bits on the cookies are really quite yummy.  I generally like my cookies to be only the one colour and don't like the overbaking of the edges or the bottoms but I make an exception when it comes to these cookies!

No Spreadage!!

When I bake cookies I always try to cut out a few simple ones so that I can judge when my RI is dry enough.  As you can see with this little cookie above, they hold their shape beautifully!

My latest bake of this recipe were for these sweet little cinnamon buns.  :)  I did something extra with these cuties by adding some cinnamon flavour to the RI.  I knew that this would change the colour a bit and I didn't want them all looking the same so I just added about half a packet of flavouring (tasting as I went) and didn't worry about the colour as I airbrushed the brown onto the cookies with 3 drops of orange to 2 drops of brown.  I just couldn't resist a cinnamon icing on a cinnamon bun made from cinnamon bun cookie dough!  :)

If you try this recipe and enjoy it, please let me know!  You can find me on facebook in the cookie group: All Things Cookies.