Cut and Bake Rainbow Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

6 oz cream cheese softened
8 tbsp salted butter (one stick) softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar, plus 2 tbsps.
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
2¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
Food coloring of your choice

Instructions

In a medium mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, butter and sugar until light and well combined. Mix in vanilla.
Add flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt. Mix well until combined and no dry streaks are running through dough.
Divide the dough into two equal balls. Plastic wrap one ball of dough and refrigerate for later.
Take the remaining dough and divide into 5 balls, each representing a different color. The 5 dough balls should be slightly increasing in size from smallest to largest, in order of the colors you are using. Using a gloved hand, mix in your food coloring for each ball. Knead in the color well enough until you have solid color. For example, the colors I chose are: red, orange, yellow, green, blue. In this order, my smallest dough ball is red, and my largest one is blue. You can use a kitchen scale to make this easier.
Wrap each colored dough ball in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or 12-24 hours.
When ready to assemble, take the colored dough balls out of the fridge and starting with the smallest size (red in my case), roll into a log about 6 inches long. Keep in mind this will gradually increase in size and your log will end up being almost double the length.
Roll the next color (orange) out flat, and wrap it around the red log entirely so you cannot see any red poking through. Pinch the seams to join dough together.
Continue this process with all colors, rolling them out flat then wrapping around the log. It might not be perfect but try to cover the entirety of the previous color. Wrap this rainbow log in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Prepare a pan by lining it with parchment paper and preheat oven to 350F.
Remove rainbow log from fridge and slice it in half along the length. You now have two rainbow dough arches! Set them aside and get out the other plain sugar cookie dough from the fridge and cut it in half. Roll out each half until flat and take one rainbow dough arch and place it on the plain sugar cookie dough, and proceed to wrap the plain dough around the rainbow dough. Try to maintain the flat side of the dough to help keep the shape of the rainbow. Repeat with the other plain dough and rainbow arch.
Cut the cookies about 1/2 inch thick and place on prepared pan. Bake for about 10-12 minutes until lightly golden on the bottom. Cool on pan for a few minutes then move to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Notes

*You can choose to freeze one log of dough if you do not need a lot of cookies. Wrap in plastic wrap and freeze for 1-2 months. When ready to bake, remove from freezer and allow to warm up until you’re able to cut it and bake as the original recipe says.