Lemon Cookies

Modified from Cream Puff Murder by Joanne Fluke

Cookies:

½ cup softened butter

¾ cup white sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 tsp lemon zest [you can go up to 1 tbsp of lemon zest, depending on how tart you want the cookies. I actually used the zest from one lemon, which was about 1 tsp for me - I'm not the best zester...you might be able to get more (I use a small microplaner). As a note, I'm the queen of the cheap and the dried lemon zest they sell in jars does NOT cut in it in ANY recipe]

2 tsp lemon juice [what I like about this recipe is it uses both the juice and zest so I feel justified in buying a lemon!]

1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

1 2/3 cup flour

½ cup milk [she used whole milk and so did I as that is what I have in the house - it is what Adam drinks]

Topping: [I actually don't think the topping is necessary...I liked the cookies fine with or without it. With it they are sticky and so hard to store, so I don't think I'll use this again.]

¼ cup lemon juice [between the juice in the recipe and then this, I was a little shy on juice (if you microwave it for about 10 seconds it will juice much better), but I always have lemon juice concentrate in the fridge.]

¾ cup white sugar

Cream butter and sugar. Add in beaten egg, lemon zest, and lemon juice and mix. Add in the milk and flour in two parts (so half of each, mix, then the rest of both and mix).

Drop by teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheet, making each cookie the size of a cherry. According to the directions, if you make them too large, they will crumble, which I can see after making them. But to make a cherry, you need half of a regular spoonful (which is what I use). I make a few with a full spoonful and those also stayed together just fine. You just need to watch your size doesn't get out of hand - and I'm a bad offender here! If you make them larger, you'll just have fewer cookies, but larger ones.

Bake at 350 for 12-14 minutes.

Mix up topping while first batch is baking. Warm up lemon juice and then stir in sugar (warming up the lemon juice will make it easier to dissolve the sugar). I did find that you had to stir up the mixture before each use. Brush on hot cookies with a pastry brush (which I don't have, so I just drizzled it on with a spoon). As I said, I don't think I'd do this again, but what I did was nest wire racks in flat baking sheets to make clean up easier (stick it all in the dishwasher).

Makes 4 small dozen cookies (the one thing nice about small cookies was that this only took me two one sheet batches!)