On the second day of Christmas I baked Lemon Cookies. Yes, it’s day number two in my 12 days of Christmas cookie baking challenge.
Lemon is not exactly a cookie you think to have for Christmas time, but I came across The Best Lemon Crinkle Cookies via Pinterest and thought I’d give them a try.
I’ve always like the fresh and tart flavor of lemon desserts. I thought that this would be something different on our Christmas cookie list.
It just so happened that I had all the ingredients on hand to make these delightful cookies. I even happen to have a fresh lemon.
As always I try to keep my baking sugar-free, so the only substitute was SPLENDA® for the sugar.
- 1/2 cups butter, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar or SPLENDA®
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar (for rolling cookie dough balls)
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease light colored baking sheets with non stick spray and set aside OR line baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Whip in vanilla, egg, lemon zest, and juice. Scrape sides and mix again. Stir in all dry ingredients slowly until just combined, excluding the powdered sugar. Scrape sides of bowl and mix again briefly. Pour powdered sugar onto a large plate. Roll a heaping teaspoon of dough into a ball and roll in powdered sugar. Place on baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough.
- Bake for 9-11 minutes or until bottoms begin to barely brown and cookies look matte. Remove from oven and cool cookies about 3 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.
My cookies do look a little smaller than the one from the original recipe but I like the bite size cookie size.
The cookies were good, but I still had a little fresh lemon juice left. So, thought I could kick up the flavor a bit by adding a lemon infused frosting to the top of them.
For the frosting I went with the following SPLENDA® royal icing recipe I got off Spark People.
- 1 - 3/4 cup SPLENDA® No Calorie Sweetener, Granulated
- 1/4 a cup and 1 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 1/2 tablespoons of meringue powder
- 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon of lemon juice
- 2 cups of powdered SPLENDA®
- 1/4 cup of warm water
- Food coloring if desired
- Place ingredients in blender jar.
- Cover and blend until SPLENDA® Granulated Sweetener is a very fine powder.
- Using a mixer whip together the sugar an meringue powder.
- Add the vanilla extract and lemon juice
- Add food coloring, if desired
- Add the water. Beat for approximately 5 minutes or until stiff peaks begin to form.
- Transfer to a pastry bag.
In the end the cookies came out rather nicely. I really like the way they tasted and looked!
Thanks so much for sharing your adaptations for this recipe! Thanks for linking back to my original post. Much appreciated!
Merry merry Christmas!
Mallory @ Classy Clutter
Thanks for having such a tasty cookie recipe! They were delicious.