Three Way Lemon Cookies

I serve our B&B guests freshly baked cookies every day.  I make the cookies and then freeze them raw, so I can bake them fresh each day, without baking a whole batch every time.  I try to do different recipes and this time I wanted to do a lemon cookie recipe. 

I couldn't find any recipes I wanted to try.  Most of them required a lemon frosting.  I decided they needed that because they didn't use enough lemon in the recipe, so I used three versions of lemon in these cookies and I really like the end result.  The latest guests even wanted the recipe.  Check my blog, I told them.

 

Three Way Lemon Cookies

1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
1 teaspoon lemon flavoring
1 1/2 lemons zest, zest both and reserve the zest from the other half of one lemon
juice from one lemon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups flour

Lemon Sugar
zest from the other half of a lemon
1/2 cup sugar

 

Set out two sticks of butter to come to room temperature. 

 

Don't heat the oven at this time.  You will need to let the cookie dough chill for at least and hour.

 

Wash and zest the two lemons.  Take half the zest from one lemon and place it in a small bowl. 

 

Add the sugar and mix, breaking up the clumps of the zest to evenly distribute it among the sugar granules. 

 

Beat the butter for 3 minutes in a stand mixer.  It will become fluffy and pale in color.  Scrape down the butter and keep mixing two times during the mixing process.  Add the sugar and mix until the sugar is incorporated into the butter.

 

Add the eggs and mix until well blended.  Add the vanilla, lemon flavoring, lemon zest and lemon juice.  I squeezed the juice over a small strainer, so that I didn't get any seeds in the cookies.

 

Add the baking soda, baking powder, salt and 1 cup of the flour.  Mix.  Then add one more cup of flour and mix.  Then mix in the last cup of flour.

Scrape down the sides and chill the dough for an hour or more.

Heat the oven to 350°.  Line the cookie sheets with parchment paper or a silicone baking pad.

 

Make balls the size of a walnut and drop them into the lemon sugar.  I used a mid-size cookie scoop and dropped them directly into the lemon sugar.  Roll the cookies gently in the lemon sugar and them place them two inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets.  Use a fork to lift them from the lemon sugar so you don't end up with too much sugar on the pan and not on the cookies.

Bake for 13-15 minutes or until the edges begin to brown.  Don't over bake.  These cookies are meant to have a lemony crunch on the outside and a soft chewy lemon burst on the inside.

 

I made enough cookies from this batch so that Lee and I could have a few.  You can't give cookies to people if you haven't taste tested them!  The rest of this batch went in the cookie jar in the B&B.  The remaining raw balls of dough went into the freezer for our next guests.