Saturday, October 17, 2009

Lemon Butter Cookies




After Ondoy, a Pepeng scare, after a week of stomach flu and fever --- who does not deserve a new haircut, a hair color, a pedicure, a little shopping spree and lots of delicious home made cookies?

Ok, I will not go into details about my
ka-artehan. But thanks to hubby for all the pampering and spoiling! I enjoyed! :)

The making of these cookies is inspired by Chichajo's Lemon Butter Cookies / Sablés Au Citron entry that I can very much relate to - most especially because of the typhoon that hit our area.

My cookies however are tinier than the original version. And my little cookies also reminded me of Eggnog cookies. How cute is that?! To this date I have already made 3 batches, all gone and will make some more by next week. A lovely lady wanted to order some of them - I said I am glad she liked it and I will just make some for her and no need for any payment whatsoever! ;) Friendship ito!

Here's the recipe of Lemon Butter cookies (original recipe and post can be found here):

1 cup + 2 tbsp All purpose flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar (I used Peotraco Caster Sugar)
1 tsp Fleur de Sel
1 tbsp fresh lemon zest, finely chopped
7 tbsp of butter, chilled and diced
1 egg yolk

- Mix altogether the first 4 ingredients, add the butter and rub it into the flour mixture until they look like coarse breadcrumbs, then add the egg yolk, blend it very well (with your hands or with a fork) with the mixture, knead lightly and form into a dough ball.

- Halve the dough and roll each half into a log about 1-inch in diameter. Wrap each log in cling wrap and tuck in the freezer for about 30-minutes.

* Unwrap the logs and slice into 1/4-inch rounds using a serrated knife
(roll the dough a quarter-turn after each slice so the log stays round)

**OR if the cookie is not as round as you wanted them to be, just get about a teaspoon full, roll it into a small ball and flatten it a bit in between your palms.

***OR on a very clean table use a rolling pin - spread out the dough and cut the cookies using your cookie cutter.

(I have done all these three ways in the 3 batches I have made!)

- Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment and pop it into the oven for 12 minutes or until done (I had mine in 18 minutes).

Transfer to a rack and let the cookies cool completely before adding the lemon-sugar glaze.

For the Lemon Sugar glaze:

1 and 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup powdered sugar

- Put ingredients in a bowl, whisk until syrupy. You may want to add more sugar little by little if you want to add more sweetness.

A few ways to glaze the cookie:

- Use a pastry brush or the back of a teaspoon...

- As for Chichajo's: Place glaze in a ziplock bag or parchment paper cone and pipe onto cookie in any design you wish!

- What I did here is I just dipped the cookies (top part) onto the glaze, set them aside and allowed the glaze to dry for about 10 minutes and repeated the process for that double glaze effect!

(Since I was able to produce about 44 baby cookies and got very addicted to the glaze, I decided to DOUBLE glaze them.)


Some photos below:









Fleur de Sel is not available in my pantry, so I used Iodized salt instead. The slight saltiness complements the buttery feel and the lemony kick! I heart it! :)

These cookies brought back our energy and took away stress from all the sad memories of Ondoy. Indeed, this is the perfect "happy cookie"! :)


A great weekend to all! :)