Laughing Cow Cookies

To celebrate my brother's arrival home from his many travels, I decided to bake some cookies. Nothing too heavy, just a light little snackable cookie that I knew he would like. I turned to one of my favorite cookie recipes, and really one of my only ones because I don't make cookies too often, the laughing cow cookie.

Laughing cow is a spreadable cheese that comes in little wedges and my family loves it. When you buy a laughing cow disk box (that's probably not its name but I don't know how else to call it) it comes with a little recipe card. Usually I just look at the recipe and then throw it away, but when I saw this cookie recipe I decided to try it because I was curious as to what laughing cow would taste like in a cookie. Fortunately, I was not disappointed.

I can't say that the cheese flavor is strong and overwhelming, in fact its quite hard to tell there is any cheese in the cookie at all. However, for a sugar cookie it is extremely soft and moist and not overwhelmingly sweet, which I like. Also, the recipe is so simple and basic that you can make tweaks to it and have one recipe turn out several different types of cookies. For example, this time I sprinkled half the cookies with plain sugar, while the other half were coated in a cinnamon-sugar mixture. In the past, I have also made the cookies double layered with a jam filling, and once with cocoa powder to make them chocolaty. Really, the possibilities are endless and I'm sure I will come up with more in the future.

Laughing Cow Cookies

• 3 wedges laughing cow spreadable cheese
• 1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder

1. In a large bowl, beat the laughing cow, butter, sugar, and vanilla until smooth.
2. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.
3. Add the dry ingredients to the first bowl and combine until a dough forms.
4. Roll out the dough to about an 1/8" thickness and cut out desired shapes.
5. Sprinkle cookie surfaces with extra sugar. Make sure to evenly coat the entire cookie.
6. Bake at 350 Fahrenheit for 10 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes before plating.