Christmas is almost here and that means you will spend a lot of time with friends and family. Homemade cookies are not only great to serve during holiday meetings, they are also perfect gifts for all those cookie lovers!

Preparation time: 1 hour
Yields: 30 cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of butter, room temperature
• ¾ cup of white sugar
• 2 ¼ cups of all-purpose flour
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp. of cream cheese
• 1 cup of chocolate chips
• 1 cup of red, green and white candy coated mini chocolate
• 1 tsp. of baking soda
• 1 tsp. of vanilla extract
• A pinch of cinnamon
• A pinch of salt

Method:

1. Combine your all-purpose flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, start to cream the butter, cream cheese and sugar until soft and creamy. It is better to do this step with an electric mixer but if you don’t’ have one, don’t worry, a hand whisker works too!
3. Incorporate your eggs to the bowl and make sure to incorporate them completely to the creamy mixture.
4. Add the vanilla extract. Remember to scrape the edges of the bowl every now and then.
5. Mix your wet and dry ingredients together. Incorporate all the ingredients to get an even cookie dough.
6. Add your chocolate chips and candy coated mini chocolate. Give it a last good stir!
7. Chill your cookie dough for 30 minutes before baking.
8. Preheat the oven to 350º degrees.
9. In a baking sheet, previously lined with parchment paper, place cookie dough balls of around 2 tbsp. size; remember you can always make them a bit larger or smaller. Leave some space between the cookies for them to expand in the oven, about 2 inches.
10. Bake for 12 minutes or until golden.
11. Let them cool down off the baking sheet.

Serve them with some ice cream or a cup hot chocolate and you will be ready to wait for Santa!