Lemon cookies for a sweet holiday. There's really no need to say more. I modified this recipe from one in a magazine to cut down on the butter a little bit without losing the crunch. You can make this cookie dough and roll it up in parchment paper, put it in a large zip top bag and leave it in the refrigerator or put it in the freezer and just slice off a few cookies at a time to bake and eat.
Lemon, butter, strawberry... it's good.
Lemon and Strawberry Cookies
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (that's 10T) butter at room temperature
zest from one lemon
juice from one lemon - about 1/8 to 1/4 cup
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
strawberry jelly and powdered sugar for filling and icing
Use a mixer to cream the butter, lemon zest and about half of the lemon juice together. Pleasepleaseplease use real butter and throw out that hydrogenated fake stuff! Add the sugar and keep mixing. Combine the flour, salt and cornstarch and add it to the mix. This will be a very crumbly dough but it will stick together if you squeeze it with your hands. Gather it up and shape it into a roll or disk, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate.
When you're ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 325. If you're going to use cookie cutters, roll the dough to 1/8" thick, cut and place cookies on parchment paper lined baking sheet. I do not have a heart shaped cookie cutter. How is this possible? You can spread jelly on these before you bake them or leave them plain. They need to bake for 14-20 minutes, or until they are lightly browned around the edges. If you cook them too long, the lemon zest will burn and the cookies will turn bitter. If you shaped the dough into a roll, slice cookies off 1/8" thick. You can also make thumbprint cookies.
Roll small balls of dough and press them with your thumb to make little wells in them. Fill these holes with strawberry jelly. To make these cookies more Valentine -ish, I spread strawberry jelly on some of them before baking to give them color. After they were baked and cooled, I used a parchment paper to block out a heart shape when they were dusted with powdered sugar.
Use the rest of your lemon juice to make a strawberry lemon glaze for the cookies. Mix lemon juice, a tablespoon or two of strawberry jelly and 1 to 2 cups powdered sugar. If you want a thicker frosting keep adding sugar, if you want a thin glaze to drizzle over the cookies, use less sugar.
These cookies are crunchy, lemony and a little buttery. When decorated for Valentine's Day, they are irresistable.
Comments