Make cream cheese filling by combining cream cheese and confectioners sugar. Whisk until thoroughly combined and scoop 12 about 1 ½ teaspoon balls on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Freeze until it is properly frozen and hard.

In a large bowl or bowl of a stand mixer with paddle attachment, combine butter and sugars. Beat the butter mixture (electric hand mixer or food processor) on low speed for 3 minutes until smooth and creamy.

Gradually add egg and vanilla. Mix on low until combined. Set aside.

In a separate large bowl, combine dry ingredients. Whisk to combine, and then add the wet ingredients to the bowl in batches. Beat on low until just combined.

Fold in the crushed raspberries and lotus cookies (or Graham crackers). Freeze the sticky batter for 30 minutes to an hour until the dough is hard enough to form firm balls (but not frozen hard). Once hardened, form the cookie dough balls with 2 tablespoons of dough each. You can also use a cookie scoop that is 4 tablespoons worth of dough. These cookie dough balls will look big.

If the cookie dough balls become soft again by the time you have shaped all of the dough, add them back to the freezer to harden them slightly.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Arrange the dough balls on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or a baking mat, leaving them about 2-3 inches apart on the prepared baking sheet as these cookies will spread quite a few inches.

Scoop out about 1 to 1 ½ teaspoons of dough out of the top center of each cookie dough ball, leaving the edges a little higher. Keep the scooped-out dough pieces next to each ball (you’ll be using this in the next step). The indentation should be deep enough to fit the frozen cream cheese balls.

Remove the cream cheese balls from the freezer. Fill each cookie dough ball with a frozen cream cheese ball and top it with the scooped-out dough, pinching the sides to seal the cream cheese inside. These should look like tall cookie balls. While making these, the cookie dough will become soft and sticky again, so you’d need to pop them back into the freezer until they harden before baking.

When ready, bake the assembled cookie balls for 11-12 minutes (the time will vary from oven to oven). Remove the cookies from the oven and decorate them with a sprinkle of crushed raspberries o top.

Allow the cookies to set and cool completely before serving. Serve with a tall glass of milk, tea, coffee, or crumbled on top of ice cream.