Grinch Gooey Butter Cookies

This is a sponsored post by Challenge butter, but the text and opinions are all mine. Thank you for supporting brands that make Kylee's Kitchen possible!

We all have a favorite Christmas cookie. I always reach for Spritz cookies. My dad loves buckeyes. My mom claims to not like cookies because she is apparently superior to the rest of us and can abstain from delicious treats. Kidding… kind of.

But you get my point. Cookies are one of the most popular holiday desserts, and it’s fun to try new varieties this time of year. And that’s exactly what I did this week with a new cookie I’m calling “Grinch Gooey Butter Cookies.”

The Gooey Butter cookie recipe I posted a few years ago is one of my most visited blog posts, so I decided to take that same recipe and give it a holiday twist. I put green food coloring in the dough and drew a little heart near the edge to represent the Grinch’s heart which “grew 3 sizes that day.”

You can use any light-colored cake mix available. I like the taste of yellow cake mix best. I also used Challenge cream cheese and butter in these cookies because they only use real cream, and there are no hormones, additives, or fillers. For the heart, you can either use homemade icing or get a small bottle of store-bought icing. Ideally, I would have used heart-shaped sprinkles, but unfortunately I couldn’t find any!

Grinch Gooey Butter Cookies
Yield: Makes about 24 cookies
Ingredients

• 1 (8 ounce) package Challenge cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup Challenge butter, softened
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1 (15.25 ounce) box of cake mix
• 1 Tablespoon green food coloring
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar
• Red icing

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, cream together butter and cream cheese until smooth (about 2 minutes)
2. Add vanilla, egg, cake mix, and green food coloring to the bowl and mix until combined.
3. Chill dough for a half hour so it’s easy to form into balls. Dough will be very sticky if you skip this step.
4. Once dough has been chilled for half hour, preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
5. Form dough into 1-inch balls and roll in powdered sugar. Place on baking sheet.
6. Bake cookies for 9-10 minutes – no longer! You want the cookies to be very soft.
7. Allow to cool before drawing a small heart with red icing.