You Need to Make These Easy Rainbow Cheesecake Cookies!

Try these fun Rainbow Cheesecake Cookies! If you’ve got some Kool-Aid in the pantry and cream cheese in the fridge, you can make these treats!

You don’t even have to make all the colors in the rainbow for this recipe. Unlike my Rainbow Jello Cookies, I created a recipe that you don’t have to make 140 cookies to get a rainbow dessert!

Don’t say I never did nothin’ for ya.

Watch the Video!

Cheesecake Cookie Frosting

The frosting is a cream cheese base with butter and granulated sugar because I was out of powdered sugar. Use what you’ve got, right? I preferred this because I dislike the extra corn starch flavor you often get with powdered sugar. And the grains really whip the cream cheese so the frosting is very fluffy.

The frosting IS grainy at first but if you let it sit for an hour or two, it smooths right out.

The frosting base for these cheesecake cookies is delicious and simple by itself and would be great on anything. But I wanted to make it even prettier by adding some colors and different flavors.

Where can you find flavor and color in one package?

Kool-Aid!

I tried a bunch of flavors for these cheesecake cookies and settled on my favorite three. Black Cherry, Mixed Berry, and Lemonade.

Watch out though! You only need a tiny amount of the powder flavoring because it is so concentrated! And there’s already the tangy flavor of the cream cheese that’s holding everything up.

It took me several tries to create something simple, tasty, and didn’t cause so much puckering from the sour flavor that your face folds in on itself and all the children cry.

But I did it! And this frosting is oh, so tasty, girl!

The Cookie Part of the Cheesecake Cookies

To balance out the intense Sherbet-like flavors of the frosting, I needed to come up with a cookie that wouldn’t take over or be bland on it’s own.

This took me way more attempts than I thought it would. However, I am super happy with what I created! A comforting, cozy cinnamon roll-out sugar cookie. I was aiming for something like a graham cracker crust.

These cookies are a little bit like gingerbread, graham crackers, and sugar cookie all rolled into one. It’s a yummy snack on its own and goes perfectly with the cream cheese/Kool-Aid frosting!

Get the Kids Involved!

We had a great time rolling out and cutting out random shapes. Who says cut-out cookies are only for Christmas?

To achieve the swirled frosting look on the cheesecake cookies, scoop each flavor, separately, onto a strip of plastic wrap and roll it up. Cut one end of the frosting rolls and put them into a piping bag (or gallon freezer bag), cut side to the tip. This will make it easier to pipe them with an even amount of filling. You can see how this process works by watching my video.

You can also watch a lovely lady named Anne Reardon, from “How to Cook That”, do the same frosting trick, but way better than me. However, I cannot find the exact video where she does it. So here’s a link to her video with a bunch of ziplock-bag piping hacks. You will totally enjoy watching all of her videos! She’s amazing! Click here for the video.

Don’t be scared by how janky everything is in the video. I’m not gonna spend money on a piping bag or 2 hours trying to find a piping tip that is probably in the yard, with all the wayward spoons. My blog name is Good Enough and Stuff after all.

I was in such a hurry to get things done that I accidently dropped one in the dirt when I was taking pictures.

Rainbow Cheesecake Cookie Recipe

Frosting:

• 2-eight ounce packs of cream cheese- softened (I used neufchatel because it’s cheaper)
• 1 stick of butter-softened
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon Mixed Berry Kool-Aid powder
• 1/8 teaspoon Black Cherry Kool-Aid powder
• 1/8 teaspoon Lemonade Kool-Aid powder
• yellow food coloring

Cream butter and cream cheese together. Add sugar and cream until light and fluffy.

Spilt frosting into three bowls. Add 1/8 teaspoon of flavoring powder to each bowl. Add yellow food coloring to the Lemonade bowl. Cover and let rest until the frosting is no longer grainy.

Cinnamon Cookies:

• 2 stick butter-softened
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoon molasses
• 2 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 4 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 teaspoons cinnamon

Cream the butter and sugars together. Add the egg, vanilla, molasses. Dump in all the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.

Roll your cookie dough out to about a 1/4 inch thick and cut out shapes. Bake at 350 for about 8-10 minutes until the edges are a little browned.

Let cool completely on a cookie rack before decorating with the frosting. The easiest way I found to decorate was to put a couple of small dollops of different colored frosting on the cookie and then swirl it with the end of the spoon.

Jessica’s Recipe Tips

• You can make a smaller amount of the cream cheese frosting and skip the Kool-Aid flavoring. Cut the recipe in half. Just use 1 package of cream cheese, 1/2 a stick of butter, 1 cup of sugar and you can add a teaspoon of vanilla extract.
• You can skip the molasses in the cookie if you don’t have it on hand. But it’s worth it if you have it!
• Roll your cookie dough between two sheets of parchment paper instead of using flour on the counter. You waste less ingredients and the extra flour could make them tougher, or so I’ve heard. This is just less messy for sure.
• For even cookies, look around your house for two things that are about 1/4 inch thick. Place them on either side of your dough to keep your rolling pin from pressing down farther than that. You can use two knives, dowels, the edges of books. I’ve even seen people use rubber bands around the edge of the rolling pin itself. I use four pieces of extra siding from a dollhouse I spent a billion hours building but never completed. Life’s full of things we don’t want to do anymore. I just wrapped them in plastic wrap and they’re the perfect thickness.

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Thanks for stopping by!

Print the recipe for later 🙂