When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Cookies

One day last week the coupons booklet from the grocery store arrived. These come every couple months or so, and usually have some good recipes along with the coupons. This time the booklet had lots of lemon recipes, and the one for Lemon Shortbread Cookies jumped out at me.

I made them on Monday and they are about the best cookies I've ever made. So light and crisp, with a nice zing of lemon. They were easy to make too.

Here's the recipe:

1 cup of softened, unsalted butter
3/4 cup of granulated sugar
1 packed tablespoon lemon zest
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
Yellow decorative sugar, if you have it. I didn't so I substituted regulat granulated sugar

In a mixing bowl of stand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar til light and fluffy. Add zest, lemon juice, flour and salt and combine well. I set my mixer on low and let it do the work. Form onto 2 or 3 logs about 1 1/2-2" in diameter. Wrap in waxed paper and refrigerate for 2 hours. (I skipped this step--the dough was firm enough to slice easily without chilling).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. If you skip the chilling step, preheat the oven before you start mixing the cookies.

Unwrap and roll in the decorative sugar (or granulated sugar). Slice into 1/3" slices and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 12-15 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through, until the cookies look dry but not brown on top (I lifted one and checked the bottom--if it was a golden brown, I figured they were done). Cool on a rack and store in an airtight container. Makes (they say) 4 dozen, but I ended up with about 30 of the yummiest cookies I've ever tasted.

Four days later they are still as fresh and crisp as the day I made them.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.