Lemon Cookies

I started with my Mom’s Basic Sugar Cookie Recipe.

It’s very old and has no details!  This is exactly how it’s written on a ripped piece of yellowed paper, in her handwriting (which I love).

Sugar Cookies

1 cup Marg

1 cup sugar

1 egg

2 cups flour

½ teas salt

½ teas baking soda

½ teas cream of tartar

1 teas vanilla

Dip bottom of glass in sugar ---

Makes 4 dozen

 

That’s it.  That’s all she wrote.  I think back in the day it was assumed that everything was baked at 350°.

 

My mise en place. I had to add the recipe and picture of my Mom laughing in the kitchen:

The day before I mixed 1 heaping tablespoon of lemon zest with 3 heaping tablespoons of sugar in a sealed container.  I planned on using that for the “dip bottom of glass in sugar”.  I figured the lemon zest would give it some extra zing. 

I added 6 teaspoons of lemon juice to the wet ingredients and 2 tablespoons of flour to compensate for the extra liquid.  I used butter instead of margarine.  Butter should be at room temperature for cookies.

 

Cream together butter, sugar, egg, vanilla and lemon juice.

In a separate bowl mix flour, salt, baking soda and cream of tartar.

Add dry ingredients to wet in two batches (that helps incorporate the flour into the creamed mixture).

Instead of rolling out the dough and using the rim of a glass or cookie cutters, I decided to shape the dough into a log and roll it in the sugar/lemon zest mixture.  I did this on plastic wrap (sorry couldn’t get a picture of the rolling because both of my hands were involved but I’m sure you get the idea).  I put the logs in the freezer for about 10 minutes until it was firm enough to slice.  I put the slices on cookie sheets (see photos below) sprayed with Pam and baked at 350° for 12 to 15 minutes*.  I had about 2 teaspoons of lemon juice left so I mixed it with 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar and made a glaze.  I brushed the glaze of the top of the cookies as soon as they came out of the oven.  I let them sit on the cookie sheets for about 5 minutes to firm up before transferring them to a cooling rack. 

 

Patti’s Notes, even though I’ve already included some along the way: I initially set the timer for 10 minutes and kept adding 2 minutes until they were done.  I started off with two cookie sheets in the oven and those took 15 minutes.  The remaining dough was only about 6 cookies and they only took 12 minutes.  Keep watching. 

Next time I will add a little more lemon juice to the dough.  They are lemony but not as tart as I would like.  I will also line the cookie sheets with parchment.  A couple of the cookies stuck to the “non-stick” baking sheets even though they were sprayed with Pam. 

The batch made 3 dozen cookies, not 4 dozen.  They are pretty good sized cookies, about 3” in diameter, so hers were probably smaller.  

 

Health-O-Meter: Well, they ARE cookies made with butter and sugar so don’t eat the whole batch! 

 

Easy Meter: Nothing difficult here.