Life is a Lemon

Now that Mike has proverbially helped break my baking cherry, I've kind have been going whole hog in the kitchen.......so to speak.

You've seen the Chocolate Chip, the M&M and the Triple Chocolate cookies. And a cake.

But as I continue on my 2015 Gluttony Tour, I still wanted lemon - the best of all citrus desserts.

It was actually for a lemon cookie recipe I was searching when I stumbled upon, and became distracted by, the Triple Chocolate one.

I found many a lemon cookie recipe, but I went with one from Ms. Gums herself: Giada.

Never have I made anything she has. I've seen her show (is it even still on?), but her over-pronunciation of certain words - and her gums - drives me to distraction. And almost everything she makes has pine nuts or almond extract. Blech on both.

Or Ricotta. She uses a lot of ricotta. In lots of things.

...apparently even in cookies. Oddly, I had some on hand, so, why the fuck not? These cookies had a lemon glaze on them, where many just had granulated sugar. I'm always picking glaze over granulated sugar.

Cookies
Flour - 2.5 c
Baking Powder - 1 t
Salt - 1 t
Butter - 1 stick (unsalted)
Granulated Sugar - 2 c
Eggs - 2
Ricotta Cheese - whole mile 15oz
Lemon Zest - 1 lemon
Lemon Juice - 3 T

Glaze
Confectioners Sugar - 1.5 c
Lemon Zest - 1 lemon
Lemon Juice - 3 T

Like most cookies - cream the butter and sugar (about 3 minutes)

Have your flour, salt and baking powder at the ready. 

To the sugar and butter - add both eggs (individually), then the ricotta, lemon zest and lemon juice. Make sure everything is incorporated. 

Then add the dry ingredients in thirds, letting them fully mix in. 

And here you go. 

Using 2T scoops (my large melon baller was 2T), put them on a lined cookie sheet. 

For whatever reason, my parchment paper has a foil side. I was distracted and put the batter on the foil side. It didn't seem to help or hurt the process. 

The dough was much easier to work with than any of the cookies I have made. 

Bake for 15 minutes in a pre-heated 375F oven. 

While baking, making up the glaze is easy. 

Mix all ingredients until they are smooth.  The glaze was thicker than I thought. I almost added more lemon juice to thin it out, but it did cover all 24 cookies. 

After cookies are completely cooled, put about 1/2 t of glaze on each cookies and spread it with the back of a spoon. 

Let cookies set for 2 hours, for glaze to harden before storing them. 

When cooling, the cookies look more like biscuits. I expected them to harden, but in fact, they were very soft - almost cake-like. The lemon taste of the cookie and the glaze is good. 

The only semi-unappealing thing is they greyness of the cookie and glaze. It's very monochromatic and save for flakes of lemon zest, nothing looks lemony, but I also wasn't willing to put in food colouring just for that sake. 

The cookies are larger than anything else I've made. Not in diameter, but in height. But with that, you get fewer. Where in Chocolate Chip, I'd get 38 or so cookies, here I got 24. I might have been able to eke out 26....but that's it. 

Still, it's nice to have another cookie in the rotation. 

I'm wondering what the grocery store is thinking? While there has been a slight increase in baking supplies, their pre-made cookie sales have plummeted. 

Thanks Mike!

Song by: Meat Loaf