I recently found these new cream cheese flavoured chips at the supermarket. I’m always drawn to new or unusual ingredients, so I felt like I needed to try them. I wasn’t totally sure what I would do with them, but some sort of carrot-cake inspired recipe seemed appropriate, and spring time feels like peak carrot cake season. I thought they would be perfect for drizzling over a carrot cake cookie. When I got home and tried them, I was quite pleased. They definitely smell like cream cheese when you open the bag, and the flavour is unsurprisingly similar to a white chocolate chip, with a hint of tangy cream cheese flavour. They are pretty good!
Note: Don’t feel like melting and drizzling the cream cheese chips? You could absolutely just fold the cream cheese chips into the cookies instead of melting and drizzling them over top. I wanted to replicate the effect of cream cheese frosting on a carrot cake, but it would be quicker and easier to just fold the chips in if you prefer.
carrot cake cookies with cream cheese drizzle
adapted from in bloom bakery
½ cup (75 g) finely shredded carrots bits, about 2 large carrots (use the small holes on a box grater)
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup rolled oats
2 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon sea salt
¾ cup butter, room temperature
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 egg yolks, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup roughly chopped walnuts (optional)
¾ cup cream cheese chips
Heat oven to 350° F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Dry the grated carrots: first, press the carrots into a fine mesh strainer set over a bowl. Use a spatula to firmly press to remove as much liquid as possible. Then press the carrots between several changes of paper towels, firmly pressing them until they are very dry and almost no moisture comes out when squeezed. Take care to extract as much liquid as possible from the carrots; if they are too wet it will ruin the texture of the cookies.
Combine flour, oats, spices, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a small bowl; set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar together on high for around 3 minutes. Add vanilla and egg yolks and mix until very fluffy and pale in colour, about 2 minutes. Halfway through mixing, scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl to ensure ingredients mix evenly.
Add shredded carrots and mix briefly. Add dry ingredients and walnuts and mix just until combined and no flour streaks remain. Using a medium sized cookie scoop, scoop cookies onto the prepared sheet. Leave about 2 inches between cookies to allow them to spread (I baked 6 cookies at a time on a 13” x 18” pan). Bake for 10-12 minutes, making sure to leave the cookies just slightly underbaked so that they stay chewy. They should look well set around the edges with slightly soft centres.
Optional cookie beautification: When you pull the cookies out of the oven, you can bang the pans hard on the counter on a folded tea towel a few times. This slightly de-puffs the cookies and makes them a bit sleeker. Also, if you want slightly rounder, more uniform cookies you can ‘scoot’ them; when they are still hot from the oven, take a large round cookie cutter and shuffle/bounce each cookie around inside the cookie cutter, until the cookies become more perfectly round.
Cool cookies on a wire rack.
To make the cream cheese drizzle: place cream cheese chips in a piping bag (use a piping bag without a hole cut in the tip). Place the bag in a cup of very hot tap water and wait about 5 minutes until all the chips are melted. Cut the tip off the piping bag to create a very small opening. Drizzle melted cream cheese chips over cookies and let them set up for a few minutes before eating. Alternately: mix in cream cheese chips with the walnuts.
