Pumpkin Cream Cheese Cookies

A few days ago, I worked on making Pumpkin Icing since I had made some of my Grandma's Cream Cheese Cookies. Normally when I make these, the icing has lemon juice..so I figured I'd experiment and see if I could come up with a "fall friendly" icing. 

Cream Cheese Cookie Ingredients: 

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

NOW - If you're wanting to press the dough through a cookie press, the ingredients listed above will work. If you're wanting to use cookie cutters, you will need to add more flour to the dough. In order for me to do that, I'd take globs of the dough and put it on the counter (which had flour sprinkled over it) and kneaded the dough while adding flour till I got a consistency that would allow a floured rolling pinto flatten it out without sticking. 

Preheat oven to 325 degrees and lightly grease cookie sheets. If you have a seasoned Stoneware piece, that works fabulous!  

In a large bowl, cream together butter, cream cheese, and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolk and vanilla. Stir in flour until well blended. Drop dough by spoonfuls or use a cookie press to place onto prepared cookie sheets. 

Bake for 15 minutes in preheated oven. Cookies should be pale on top and a golden brown on the bottom. Let them cool completely! 

Pumpkin Icing:

• 8 oz package of cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 1 tablespoon of pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 1/2 cups powdered sugar (more if you prefer to pipe the frosting on instead of spreading)   

In a large bowl, mix frosting ingredients with electric hand mixer. Spread onto cooled cookies, or pipe on with an Easy Accent Decorator.