Baking: Frosted Lemon Cookies

This weekend, I found myself with more free time than I've had in a while! With a party or two on my schedule for this weekend, I decided to bake some goodies to share with the other guests. I was caught at a crossroads--lemon sables, lemon whoopie pies, or double chocolate chip cookies.

With summer coming to a close, I decided to give lemons a last hurrah in my kitchen. Double chocolate chip is delicious, but to me seems better on a cold winter night. Microwave one of those bad boys with a cool glass of milk--perfect. Chocolate ooey gooeyness on an uber humid and hot night? Less appealing (but perhaps not to you serious chocoholics out there).

And then lemon sables or lemon whoopie pies? Lemon sables are a favorite of my mom's, and that's most likely for their subtle lemon taste and buttery texture. Remember how I decided on giving lemon's a last hurrah? Well, if it's a hurrah that I want, I'm going to end my August with a lemony bang. I want lemon oozing out of these cookie's pores--and so it was decided, lemon whoopie pies!

Given all the time I spent deciding, it's funny that I made none of my three choices. As I was baking these cookies, I realized how gigantic they would be! Two cookies and frosting. I myself was wary about tackling one of these monstrous(ly good) cookies. So I figured my fellow guests would be too. And the project quickly became one for Frosted Lemon Cookies.

These cookies are delicious. The recipe is very loosely based off of Joy the Baker's Lemon Whoopie Pies, but I changed the sugar and lemon elements rather significantly. When I made her recipe in the Spring, I found the cookies to be very bland and not lemony at all. As a result, I made some increases in the recipe's lemon demands. Also, I decreased the sugar by 25% because I never really like too much sugar in my cookies anyway. I'm not brave enough to decrease it by 50% yet, but I may consider it in the near future. So far, I've worked on one project of Blueberry Muffin where the food turned out fine after I cut the sugar in half.

I was so happy to use the Offset Spatula that M got for me this summer! Let me tell you, frosting with this tool is way easier (last time I frosted Green Tea Cupcakes with a normal spatula and ended up with a very sore wrist).

I'd say Frosted Lemon Cookies is a pretty spectacular inauguration for my baby. 

The cookies are soft (almost cake like if you choose to make slightly bigger ones), and the frosting is delicious. The frosting has a cream cheese base, but the lemon juice really scream summer.  Actually, the lemon juice on my cookies screamed 'SUMMER, WHY MUST YOU LEAVE ME? WHY?! WHY?!?!?!'

...

The zest gives some nice color accents, no?

Looking at (and eating) these lemon cookies really kept my spirits up on this rainy day. 

These cookies are good freshly baked, but on a hot summer day I think they taste better refrigerated. It's something akin to the joy of drinking fresh iced lemonade when it's sweltering hot.


Frosted Lemon Cookies

Recipe makes approximately 4 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

For the cake

3 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

12 tbsp butter

1 + 1/2 cup sugar

The zest of 5 lemons -- minus the 1 tsp needed for the frosting

2 eggs

The juice of 5 lemons -- minus the 4 tbsp needed for the frosting

1 cup buttermilk 

For the frosting

12 tbsp butter

12 oz cream cheese

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp lemon zest

4 tbsp lemon juice

5 + 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Note: This above frosting recipe made almost double the frosting of what I needed. One option is to keep the frosting for a lemon cake! I would highly recommend Baking With Em & M's Lemon Cake--use a cake pan and you can slather on the extra frosting onto it! Her recipe is for a bundt cake, but read her Red Velvet Cake post for information on how to prep the cake pan and for baking times. I think this cream cheese lemon frosting on a lemon cake would be divine (Perhaps I will try it one day...). You wouldn't have to bake the cake on the same day because you can refrigerate the frosting. If making a separate lemon cake is not to your liking, you can simply cut the amounts in half. 

If you do choose to make half the frosting, I've put the new values here:

6 tbsp butter

6 oz cream cheese

1/4 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp lemon zest 

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 + 3/4 cups powdered sugar 

Note that using these new values will also leave you with more lemon elements for the cookie batter! This is just fine, because the cookies are only moderately lemony. So adding extra would not cause some kind of lemon overdose (which I don't think is a problem anyway…).

Recipe:

For the lemons

[1] Wash the lemons with soap and water. Rinse and then dry. 

[2] Using a grater, zest the lemons. Try to restrict your zesting to the yellow outermost part of the lemon and to avoid the white layer underneath. The yellow layer gives it the lemony flavor; the white gives it bitterness. This piece of advice is not a hard and fast rule, but is a general guideline. 

[3] Cut the lemons in half and squeeze the juice into a bowl. 

[4] Pour the juice into another bowl slowly; if you do it right, the seeds will stay to the bottom of the other bowl. An easier way would be to pour the lemon juice (seeds and all) through a strainer. 

For the cookies

[0] Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 

[1] In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together. 

[2] In a large bowl, combine the butter (it's easiest to work with at room temperature), sugar, and lemon zest. Use an electric mixer at medium speed until smooth (about 3 minutes). 

[3] Add the eggs, lemon juice, and vanilla. Mix at medium for about 1 minute until even. 

[4] Add in half of the dry ingredient mixture you prepared earlier. (I recommend mixing it in lightly with a fork before turning on the electric mixer. That save your front side from getting sprayed with flour etc. 

[5] Add the buttermilk. Mix it in on low speed. 

[6] Add the rest of the dry ingredients. Mix on low until even. 

[7] Place about 1 tbsp of dough onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. If you want bigger, fatter cookies, I recommend getting a large tbsp of dough (these end up being thick and cake like.) If you you want thinner cookies, use slightly less than a tbsp of dough. I did some of each, so I could please the two different cookie populations. 

[8] Bake for around 12-14 minutes until there is a faint brown outline around the cookie's edge. Time may be modified--the key element is that if you insert a toothpick or fork into the cookie, it can be removed cleanly. Upon completion, the undersides should be have some general browning. While baking, around 6 minutes (the halfway point), rearrange the baking pans top-bottom and front-back. In other words, what was on the left, should now go to the right. What was deepest in the oven should now be closest to the oven's from door. 

[9] Let cookies cool for approximately 10 minutes before applying frosting. 

For the frosting

[1] Using an electric beater, mix and smush around (for lack of better descriptors) the butter. When it's reasonably mushed, add half the cream cheese. Mix it together. 

[2] Add the rest of the cream cheese, along with the vanilla, lemon zest, and lemon juice. Mix together until even on medium speed. 

[3] Add the powdered sugar in one cup at a time. After I added each cup, I recommend mixing it around with a fork prior to using the electric mixer. This prevents a mini sugar explosion in your face and on your clothes. 

[4] Add a dollop of frosting to each cookie and use spatula to smooth. 

[5] Serve at room temperature or refrigerate prior to serving. Cookies store for up to 4 days. 

Baking: Lemon Sables

My week-long baking hiatus was thankfully interrupted by...lemon sables (pronounced sah-BLAYS)! These cookies are a nice twist to the traditional plain French butter cookie--everything tastes better with lemons. Their texture is more 'elusive[ly] sandy' (America's Test Kitchen) than chewy, and thus were a big hit with my mom.

The most interesting part of this recipe was the technique used to give the cookies their characteristic cylinder shape. The secret involves wrapping/rolling the dough in parchment paper, and then twisting the ends. Refrigerating this for one hour ensures complete compaction of the dough and maintenance of its form after baking. A picture below illustrates my point:

This goes in the fridge for 1 hour, and then you slice each tube into  1 in thick pieces.

After refrigerating, a good tip given by ATK is to rotate the dough log about 1/4 in. after every 2-3 cookie slices so as not to get a lopsided cookies.

According to ATK, the secret to getting the right sables textures is adding an egg yolk. In their recipe, they recommend pushing the yolk through a strainer. I didn't have one during this baking project, so I made for the next best thing--smushing the yolk between the bottom of my Asian soup spoon and my Korean bowl. Think of it as a modern day mortar-and-pestle. I think this method worked just fine! The goal was to get a finely ground, even yolk mixture, and that I did reach!

After baking is complete, the cookies should appear 'pale golden brown with edges slightly darker than centers' after approximately 15 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I wasn't able to get cookies that fit this description, but I baked batches at 17 and 19 minutes, with the former being much better. The latter was a little bit too overdone and dry. It's something you have to eyeball though, and below is a picture of the successful batch. 

Lemon sables!!! I know, they don't look particularly golden, but they tasted mighty fine. 

Lemon Sables (Adapted from Cooks' Illustrated November 2008 issue)
Recipe makes about 40 cookies


Ingredients:
1 egg yolk
10 tbsp (1 + 1/4 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
1/3 cup + 1 tbsp white granulated sugar
1/4 tsp table salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 lemons worth of grated lemon zest
1 + 1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour


Recipe:
[0] Wash lemons with soap and water. Use a grater to obtain the zest of 5 lemons. When shopping for lemons, choose those with a bright yellow hue and a relatively smooth texture. Avoid lemons with extreme dimpling.
[1] Fill a pot with water. Set heat on high to bring water to a boil. Add one large egg. Boil for 10 minutes. Remove egg from pot and place in bowl filled with cold water for 5 minutes. Remove egg yolk, and send through strainer. If no strainer is available, another worthy alternative is repeated mushing the yolk between a rounded spoon and a bowl.
[2] Using an electric mixer, beat together the butter, sugar, salt, and egg yolk on medium speed for about 4.5 minutes until light and fluffy. Use rubber spatula to incorporate mixture stuck to the side of bowl as needed.
[3] Add vanilla and lemon zest. Mix on low speed until incorporated.
[4] Add flour and mix on low speed for about 30 seconds until completely incorporated. At this point, the dough will appear crumbly.
[5] Use spatula and/or hands to compact the dough into one solid ball. Separate the ball into two halves.
[6] Roll each piece of dough into a log about 1 + 3/4 inches in diameter. It does not need to be perfect--after you wrap it in parchment paper, it will achieve the desired uniform shape.
[7] Wrap the log in a 12'' x 12'' piece of parchment paper. Use a piece of tape if desired to attach the paper's free end to the wrapping. Twist the ends tightly to fully compact the dough. Repeat process for the other piece of dough.
[8] Refrigerate both logs for 1 hour until firm.
[9] At the tail-end of your waiting window, preheat the oven for 350 degrees Fahreneheit.
[10] Remove dough logs from refrigerator and unwrap from parchment paper. Using a chef's knife, cut each log into 1 inch thick pieces; remember to rotate the log every 2-3 pieces to prevent lopsided cookies.
[11] Place cookies on parchment paper-lined baking pan. Arrange them so they are about 1 inch apart.
[12] Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately 17 minutes. Time may vary depending on your oven. You want the edges to be slightly golden and the center to remain pale; if the edges are a light/dark brown, you have overdone the cookies.
Note: If you are baking two pans simultaneously, place one pan on the top shelf and one on the middle shelf. At around 7 minutes, switch the pans front to back and top to bottom. This ensures for even baking.
[13] Enjoy! Cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to 1 week.
[13] Let cookies cool and enjoy.