All content copyright Katrina Hall 2008 through 2025

Sunday, June 8, 2014

tangy glazed Italian lemon cookies and summer days







Summer is here!  The days are warm and full of birdsong, and down at the pond, the little beach is filled with children splashing and swimming.  I thought this day would never come, but here we are.  How heavenly is that, after a ...um, challenging winter, with way too many days with the thermometer stuck on 15 degrees below zero?

The hemlocks are sending out their several inches of new growth, with light green fingers celebrating Summer.  And I made a fresh fruit salad to toast the new season of sunny, summer weather, as well as a new recipe for the most wonderful lemon cookies I found here.  These are so wonderful to serve along with ice cream, fruit, or a nice little creme brulee or chocolate mousse.  Wish my sister was here to enjoy them - though she really loved chocolate anything:)  

I did change the recipe a bit, but it's easy as pie - no sticking the dough in the fridge for a few hours.  Just whip it up, bake, mix up a quick icing, and you're done.

The dough:
 1/2 cup sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
3 large eggs
zest of 1/2 lemon
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 cups King Arthur flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
two pinches of kosher salt

Preheat oven to 350F.

Fit two baking sheets with parchment.

Cream together the butter and sugar.
Add eggs, lemon zest, and  lemon juice and mix.
Add flour, baking powder, and salt and mix very briefly, just until mixed.
Using a small ice cream scoop ( I used a 1 1/4 inch scoop) scoop out little balls of dough, (if you want bigger cookies, just add 5 or 6 more minutes if you're using a 2 inch scoop)  onto baking sheet, two inches apart.
Bake 12 minutes in preheated oven.

While the cookies are baking make the icing:

1 1/2 tablespoons water
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 cup confectioners sugar

Whisk ingredients well, set aside.

When the cookies are done, set onto cooling rack to cool completely, then dip tops of cookies into the icing, letting the icing drip slowly back into the icing bowl.  When it stops dripping, set on a rack to dry.

Let cool completely before storing in a container - if they last that long!



4 comments:

La Table De Nana said...

A well deserved green palette for you..
So enveloping isn't it?
Everything looks fresh and delicious..
Here's to Spring and soon summer.
May it fill us with gentle new memories to coast through next winter:-)

katrina said...

Nana - as always, we skipped (at least the last two days) straight to summer. Kayaks and canoes on top of everyones cars , children swimming at the pond. Green, yes! Not quite as green and beautiful as your garden, but it will do.

Barb said...

I was thinking about you so I came to say "hi" and ask how you are?

Love the lovely new green of the hemlocks and I love everything lemon - I'll have to give these a try.



katrina said...

You are so thoughtful, Barb - thank you. It's tough right now - almost 4 weeks since my sister died, and I miss her more than ever. All in good time, as our dear father used to say:)
I thought I remembered you were also a fan of anything lemon! I loved the little cookies, and might try baking them a little longer to make them crunchy, like amaretti , just to experiment. I had some glaze left over and kept it on hand for double dipping the cookies - yummy!