coconut cream cheese cookies - guilt-free cookie dough!

My boyfriend loves coconut, so I always try to find recipes including it. I stumbled across Cook's Illustrated's Coconut Cream Cheese Cookies and was immediatly drawn to it. I absolutely love Coook's Illustrated recipes (their chocolate chip cookie won my cookie throwdown) and I trusted that this would be another reliable recipe from them. So as I brought this dough ball to my boyfriend's house the other night (I made the dough a few days prior in my boredom at home), his first response was "Is there white chocolate chips in there?".. I don't know why, but this just ticked me off! Lol. Like, I always have to add white chocolate chips in everything just for him. But for once I wanted to bake something different and actually follow the recipe without any additions. So because of his little remark, I refused to bake the cookies for a few days, and I resorted to eating the dough raw by myself.


So the best part of this recipe is that the cookie dough is completely edible (not that it has ever stopped me lol). The egg is replaced by the creamcheese, making eating this dough completely guilt-free (not in terms of calories though). I'm a huge cookie dough lover, and most of the time I prefer the cookie dough to the actual cookie. I even got my boyfriend (who NEVER eats cookie dough) to taste a piece of this dough. This mini ball you see here, well it was about 10 times larger because I couldn't help myself and continuously ate pieces of dough when no one was looking.


These turned out so good! I love the fact that they were slightly crisp on the outside and extremely chewy on the inside.


Look at the coconut flakes poking out from the center of the cookie!


I'm definitely going to bake another batch of these (and hopefully not eat all the dough in the process)... And- if he's lucky, I might add a few white chocolate chips. But no guarantees!

---RECIPE---
Taken from Baking Blond, Recipe from Cooks Illustrated

ingredients:
2 cups plus 3 tbsp All-Purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons (1+1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted & cooled
6 oz cream cheese, softened
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups coconut toasted (I toasted 2 cups, and eventually added about 1 more cup of untoasted)

directions:
1. Adjust oven racks to upper & lower -middle positions & heat oven to 325. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Spread coconut evenly on baking sheet.
2. Once oven is preheated place coconut in oven. Bake for 10-20 minutes stirring every 5 minutes for even toasting. Remove from oven when light brown. Do NOT burn. Remove from oven. Allow to cool completely before adding to dough.
3. Re-line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
4. Whisk dry ingredients together; set aside. With electric mixer, or by hand mix butter and cream cheese together with a mixer until smooth. Add sugars and beat until thoroughly combined. Beat in vanilla until combined.
5. Add dry ingredients & beat at low speed just until combined. Stir in cooled coconut.
6. Chill dough overnight.
7. When ready to bake cookies preheat oven to 350 degrees.
8. Drop dough onto parchment lined baking sheets and bake for 12-14 minutes or until edges are set and bottoms are light brown. Do NOT overbake!