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These soft and chewy cheesecake cookies are made by dressing up a vanilla cake mix with cream cheese and eggs. The chocolate chips are optional, but highly recommended!
I don't know about you, but I'll choose cookies over cake if I'm given a choice. Unless that cake is, in fact, cheesecake. To be fair, though, a cheesecake isn't really a cake in the traditional sense, is it? It doesn't matter at all, though, since cheesecake cookies are the best of everything. The end.
Cheesecake Cookies have all the gorgeous decadence of cheesecake. They're pillow-soft, smooth and rich, but they still have all the fun of a cookie. And they are, seriously, ready to eat in 20 minutes flat. How's that for easy?
I've been making these ridiculously easy cookies since at least 2010, when I developed the recipe for my second cookbook, Gluten Free on a Shoestring Quick and Easy. In that cookbook, there's an entire chapter (Chapter 8) on make-your-own dessert mixes. One of those mixes is for a make-your-own vanilla cake mix, which I've since shared here on the blog.
Gluten free cake mixes
Cake mixes are the sort of thing that I never really understood until I wrote that cookbook. I mean, what's so hard about throwing together a few basic dry cake ingredients like flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and sugar? And then I finally realized that cake mixes offered certainty. Everything was measured precisely. So when you add the eggs, maybe some oil and some water, you'll get the same cake every single time.
If you'd like to make this recipe with a boxed vanilla cake mix (gluten free or not!), it will work. And I will not judge you! But if you'd like to make your own cake mix, you can do that too. You just need a simple digital food scale, and my cake mix recipe.
Cheesecake cookies ingredients and substitution suggestions
As always, unless I specifically indicate otherwise, I haven't tried this recipe with any of these substitutions. They're simply my best-educated guesses, designed to help those of you who have other dietary restrictions still enjoy some amazing recipes.
Dairy-Free: I'm not gonna lie—there's a whole lot of dairy in these cheesecake cookies. Replacing the butter is easy enough (I think Spectrum nonhydrogenated butter-flavored vegetable shortening would work great), but then there's the matter of the cream cheese.
There are plenty of nondairy cream cheeses on the market, but none taste just like the “real thing” to me. My make-your-own vanilla cake mix also contains dairy in the form of buttermilk powder, but in that recipe, you can replace the buttermilk powder with an equal amount, by weight, of coconut milk powder or blanched finely ground almond flour.
Egg-Free: My standard substitute recommendation for eggs is a “chia egg” (mix 1 tablespoon ground chia seeds with 1 tablespoon lukewarm water and allow it to gel) for each actual egg. Since this recipe is so super simple, I'm honestly not sure how it would work here, though.
Easy Cheesecake Cookies
Equipment
- Handheld mixer
Ingredients
- 8 ounces mascarpone cheese or cream cheese, at room temperature
- 4 tablespoons (56 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 2 (100 g (weighed out of shell)) eggs, at room temperature, beaten
- ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 (16 ounces) box gluten-free yellow cake mix, or 1 recipe Make-Your-Own Vanilla Cake Mix
- 3 to 4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips, (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with unbleached parchment paper and set it aside.
- In a large bowl, place the mascarpone or cream cheese, butter, eggs, and vanilla, and beat well with a mixer or by hand.
- Add the vanilla cake mix and mix by hand until just combined. The dough will be thick.
- Add the optional chocolate chips and mix until the chips are evenly distributed throughout the dough.
- Divide the dough into portions of about 1 1/2 tablespoons each (or about 2 teaspoonsful for smaller cookies) onto the prepared baking sheet, about 1 inch apart.
- Flatten the mounds of dough into disks with wet hands.
- Place the baking sheet in the center of the preheated oven and bake until the cookies are just beginning to brown on the underside and the edges.
- For larger cookies, baking takes about 14 minutes; for smaller cookies, about 10 minutes.
- Allow the cookies to cool until set on the baking sheet before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
- These cookies freeze amazingly well, so they can easily be made ahead of time.
- Just freeze them in a single layer on a baking sheet before piling them into a freezer-safe container. They don’t even freeze solid, so they barely have to thaw before you can eat them.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I have ground almonds but Is this the same as almond flour and could I use it in your cake mix? Hope so as I really must make these, they look lovely.
Can dried fruit be used in place of chocolate chips? Or freeze dried fruit?
Sure, Natividad. I’d do dried fruit, not freeze-dried fruit depending upon being dry, and baking in the cookies will make the fruit chewy in an unpleasant way.
Every year the teachers make cookie trays for the support staff. Last year was my first year GF and I had a miserable time baking anything. I am so excited this year because I have a year of baking successes (and disatasters, lol) under my belt. I was going to make a variety of cookies. My son saw this recipe and has decided that we should make three batches… one and a half for the cookie trays and one and a half for him. He loves cheesecake and thinks these look divine! :-)
These were great! Quick and easy and tasty! But the recipe made a solid 3 dozen cookies for me. Perhaps my scoops were too small. Dunno.
These were great! Quick and easy and tasty! But the recipe made a solid 3 dozen cookies for me. Perhaps my scoops were too small. Dunno.
ooh.. so gonna make these.. will have to check to see if i have a cake mix in the pantry or not.. we’re all just getting over a nasty stomach bug, so we’re behind in the whole holiday baking thing… but, i think these are totally getting added to the list..
Absolutely delicious cookies and so easy to make. I recently purchase your cookbook Gluten Free Shoestring Quick and Easy, a great book.
Absolutely delicious cookies and so easy to make. I recently purchase your cookbook Gluten Free Shoestring Quick and Easy, a great book.