Cream Cheese White Chocolate Chip Cookies — These soft and chewy white chocolate chip cookies use two special ingredients to achieve their pillowy texture: instant pudding mix and cream cheese!
White Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
When the weather gets warmer, I seem to crave white chocolate. I’ll never say no to regular chocolate chip cookies but white chocolate has been calling my name lately.
The cookies are extremely soft, moist, and creamy. To create them I combined two favorite recipes, Softbatch Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies and The Best Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies. Both are reader and personal favorites.
Some of the butter is replaced with cream cheese and the white chocolate chip cookies have unparalleled richness. Interestingly, the cream cheese intensifies the buttery flavor so the cookies taste extra buttery, with a mild cheesecake flavor, and zero cakiness.
One of the secrets to these white chocolate cookies is pudding mix, and my favorite cookies all contain pudding mix because of the wonderful Softbatch-style results achieved. I found myself going back for nibble after nibble. Good thing the recipe only makes 11 cookies.
I had no willpower against the creamy, melty, sweet white chocolate and soft, buttery, rich dough.
What’s in White Chocolate Chip Cookies?
To make these white chocolate chip cookies, you’ll need:
- Unsalted butter
- Cream cheese
- Granulated sugar
- Light brown sugar
- Egg
- Vanilla extract
- All-purpose flour
- Instant vanilla pudding mix
- Baking soda
- Salt
- White chocolate chips
How to Make White Chocolate Chip Cookies
To make these white chocolate chip cream cheese cookies, cream together the butter, sugars, cream cheese, egg, and vanilla until smooth. Add in the dry ingredients and mix until just combined, then fold in the white chocolate chips.
Scoop the dough into balls. I like to move a few of the white chocolate chips to the top of each cookie to make them a little prettier.
Chill the rolled cookie dough for at least 3 hours, then bake until the edges have set and the tops have just set (the tops should still be a little glossy in the center). Let the white chocolate chip cookies cool for 10 minutes before eating them.
What Can I Substitute for the Pudding Mix?
There’s no true substitute for it. 2 teaspoons of cornstarch will likely work, but I haven’t tested it.
Do I Need to Make the Pudding Before Adding it to the Dough?
No, you add the pudding mix as a dry ingredient. You should NOT add any liquid to the pudding mix before mixing it into the cookie dough.
Can I Add Other Mix-Ins to These Cookies?
Yes, as long as you stick to dry mix-ins, like chopped nuts or dried fruit.
Tips for Making White Chocolate Chip Cookies
You must use old-fashioned brick-style cream cheese. Cream cheese in a tub or that’s ‘spreadable’ isn’t thick enough, has too much water content, and the cookies will spread. You can use lite, but not fat-free because some fat is necessary to properly bind the ingredients.
The cookies are sweet, rich, decadent, dense, and wonderfully thick. For cookies this thick, you must plan ahead and chill the dough. Soft, warm dough straight from the mixing bowl that contains softened butter and softened cream cheese will never bake up into thick, puffy cookies.
If you use a cookie scoop and bake on a Silpat, even better. All these little cookie baking tricks do add up to help you achieve bakery-style cookies at home.
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Soft and Chewy Cream Cheese White Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- ½ cup unsalted butter, softened
- 2 ounces about 1/4 cup cream cheese, softened*
- ¾ cup light brown sugar, packed
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- one 3.5-ounce packet instant vanilla or cheesecake-flavored pudding mix
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- pinch salt, optional and to taste
- 10 ounces white chocolate chips
Instructions
- To the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or large mixing bowl and electric mixer) combine the butter, cream cheese, sugars, egg, vanilla, and beat on medium-high speed until creamed and well combined, about 4 minutes
- Stop, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and add the flour, dry pudding mix, baking soda, optional salt, and beat on low speed until just combined, about 1 minute.
- Stop, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and add the white chocolate, and beat on low speed until just combined, about 30 seconds.
- Using a large cookie scoop, 1/4-cup measure, or your hands, form approximately 13 to 14 equal-sized mounds of dough, roll into balls, and flatten slightly. Tip – Strategically place a few white chocolate chips right on top of each mound of dough by taking chips from the underside and adding them on top.
- Place mounds on a large plate or tray, cover with plasticwrap, and refrigerate for at least 3 hours, up to 5 days. Do not bake with unchilled dough because cookies will bake thinner, flatter, and be more prone to spreading.
- Preheat oven to 350F, line a baking sheet with a Silpat or spray with cooking spray. Place dough mounds on baking sheet, spaced at least 2 inches apart (I bake 8 cookies per sheet) and bake for about 11 minutes, or until edges have set and tops are just set, even if slightly undercooked, pale, and glossy in the center; don’t overbake. Cookies firm up as they cool.
- Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for about 10 minutes before serving. I let them cool on the baking sheet and don’t use a rack.
Notes
- *Use cream cheese in a block, lite is okay; don’t use fat-free, ‘spreadable’, or cream cheese in a tub.
- Cookies will keep airtight at room temperature for up to 1 week or in the freezer for up to 6 months.
- Alternatively, unbaked cookie dough can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days, or in the freezer for up to 4 months, so consider baking only as many cookies as desired and save the remaining dough to be baked in the future when desired.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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Browned Butter Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookies — SALTY-AND-SWEET, soft, and chewy chocolate chip cookies that are PERFECT!! An EASY, one-bowl, no-mixer recipe that’s just the BEST!!
Chocolate Chip and Chunk Cookies — I use two types of chocolate in these cookies; chocolate chips and chocolate chunks, for extra depth and flavor.
Chocolate and cream cheese are ALWAYS a winning combo! These look beautiful and super tasty.
makes me smile. they look delicious and so rich with the cream cheese
You take the best cookie photos ever! Makes me want to dive right in and eat the entire batch! Love that there are cream cheese in these cookies :) Pinned!
You’re so sweet to say that – thank you! And I just pinned your salad on Alyssa’s site – looks fab!
LOVE cream cheese in baked goodies. Averie, these cookies look wonderful. Pinned of course!
Thanks for pinning and it’s hard to turn down cream cheese in most anything, right :)
I’ve made rolled cookies with cream cheese in them, but never drop-style. Intriguing.
You’re going to love them, Kris! So much easier than roll-out cookies, too!
These are so thick…I love your cookies pictures…cream cheese in cooking baking I have never done definitely going to try if these beauties are the end result. Please think of mass producing and shipping your cookies in the near future!!!
You’re going to love them if you try these! The flavor, texture, just everything is so good! And thanks for the cookie picture compliments and I WISH I could ship my cookies and anything I make. It would make my life so much easier having a built-in home for all the extra stuff I have, daily.
For the Soft and Chewy White Chocolate Cream Cheese Cookies one of the ingredients is pudding mix. Is that instant pudding or the kind you have to cook? I’ll be making them just as soon as I find out what kind I should use. Thanks for a glorious looking cookie.
Good catch and question (fixed now, thanks!) but it’s instant! Just add the powder right in with the rest of the dry ingredients as if it was flour and you’re all set!
These cookies look amazing!!
OMG! Wanna have right now!
I LOVE white chocolate. These cookies love so yummy and puffy!
I have never tried cream cheese in cookies before, but how could it NOT be amazing? These cookies look so thick and chewy and perfect :)
Zero cakiness = PERFECTION.
I’ve been so weirdly craving white chocolate too. I almost bought a big fat ghiradelli bar at the store last week.
I crave it every summer, like clockwork! You should always have a big fat Ghir bar on hand! :)
Your cookies always look so delicious. I want to grab into my screen and eat one right now!
Thanks, Jenna!
Cream cheese cookies are the best, these look incredible!
I need to try cream cheese in cookies. These look fabulous!!! Pinned of course. And I’m drooling…
Dorothy they are like pudding cookies in the sense that once you try them, you will be hooked! I know you’d love the dough base based on what I know you like :)
Another amazing cookie recipe! Your stacks of cookies all look so uniform and perfect in size and shape–I bet a cookie scoop would help me achieve that. I know you have put a lot of time and energy into the photography part of blogging and it really shows–all of your photos make me want to grab whatever you’ve made right off the screen! I can imagine how good they taste too–cream cheese and white chocolate sounds great together.
Thanks for saying that, Paula, because yes, the styling and photography is as important, if not more important, than the recipe itself. If it doesn’t look amazing, no one wants it, wants to make it, visits my blog, etc. Food is so visually driven that successful food bloggers also have to become photographers, and get a degree in computer science while you’re at it to deal with the behind the scenes website stuff :)
And yes, cookie scoops are LIFE changers. I could not function without mine! They are key to helping get thick cookies as well as the uniformity!