Glittering Snowflakes

These glittering snowflake cookies are a cream cheese cutout cookie with a tender, melt-in-your-mouth texture you won’t get from a standard butter cookie. The cream cheese keeps the dough soft and pliable while adding a subtle tang that balances the sweetness. A touch of lemon zest brightens the whole batch.

The dough chills for two hours before rolling, which firms it up enough to hold the snowflake shapes cleanly. Roll to ⅛ inch thick for cookies that are crisp on the edges and just barely soft in the center. They bake fast, only about 5 minutes, so watch them closely.

A simple powdered sugar icing goes on after cooling, then edible glitter or colored sugar gets sprinkled on while the icing is still wet. They catch the light on a holiday cookie tray like actual snowflakes.

Pro Tips

• Chill the dough the full 2 hours. Warm dough sticks to the cutter and loses its shape on the baking sheet.
• Roll between two sheets of parchment to prevent sticking without adding too much extra flour, which toughens the cookies.
• Pull them at 5 minutes when the edges are just firm. They’ll continue to set as they cool on the rack.
• Apply icing to one cookie at a time and add glitter immediately, before the icing sets.

Variations

• Tint the icing pale blue with a drop of food coloring for an icy winter look.
• Replace lemon zest with orange zest for a warmer citrus flavor.
• Sandwich two cookies together with a thin layer of raspberry jam for a filled version.