Just Lemon Cookies

I saw a recipe the other day for miso brown butter chocolate chip cookies with sesame seeds on top. Hm. That’s a lot. The extra ingredients don’t appeal to me in a chocolate chip cookie and neither does the description of them being savory. At what point does it stop being a chocolate chip cookie? I’m not a Luddite. I love it when I come across a recipe that uses an ingredient in a novel way or when I’m introduced to a new ingredient that blows my mind but there is a limit to how many things one can put together in a recipe before it just starts to look like Google keyword bingo.

We have so much access to ingredients our forebears never had. Ingredients that sound exciting! New versions of things that are familiar like pomegranate molasses! Thank you, Ottolenghi. Maybe it’s the appeal of the new that sucks us in? But my bottle of pomegranate molasses sits forlornly, out of date and unopened, in my pantry. I’m guessing there are a lot of those bottles in a lot of kitchens. And probably a decent amount of miso that was bought in good faith but then needed to be used up in chocolate chip cookies.

It doesn’t surprise me that the recipe that actually made it into my spring time rotation of cookies has one flavor. Lemon. Just lemon. The recipe is from Heather at Boston Girl Bakes and I didn’t change a single thing. There’s always a moment, a flight of fancy, when I have found a great basic recipe where I think about what I could add or how I could change it to make it even better. Add poppyseeds. Switch out the lemon drizzle for strawberry drizzle. Put a fresh raspberry in the middle or some raspberry jam. Make them a little smaller and they’re the perfect one bite bake for a tea party or baby shower.

Some of that may come in the future but now, today, they are just lemon cookies. Not one note but cookies that celebrate the brightness and joy of one flavor, highlighting it so you can concentrate on the quiet, easy simplicity of one great thing. Less complication, more cookie. I love them. I think you will, too.

Baking

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24 lemony bundles of joy

45 if you can get two trays in your oven at once, otherwise about an hour

Ingredients

For the cookies

350g all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

225g unsalted butter, softened

250g golden caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 Tbsp lemon juice

1 Tbsp lemon zest

1 large egg

For the icing

225g icing sugar

60ml lemon juice

2 Tbsp milk

1 Tbsp lemon zest

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 190C/170C fan. Line two baking sheets. If you bake regularly and aren’t already using silicone baking mats, I highly recommend them because they cut down on a lot of waste, parchment paper-wise.

It doesn’t really matter where you start on this one but we’re going to start by putting all the dry ingredients in a bowl. If you have one, put a sieve over the top of a medium size bowl and sift the FLOUR, BAKING POWDER, BAKING SODA, and SALT through the sieve.

In a separate bowl, cream the UNSALTED BUTTER and GOLDEN CASTER SUGAR most easily with a hand mixer, until they are light and fluffy. Add the VANILLA EXTRACT, LEMON JUICE, LEMON ZEST and EGG. Mix again on medium speed until everything is incorporated into quite a firm dough.

Take a small scoop of dough, roll it into an approximation of a ping pong ball and space 12 out on each cookie sheet.

Put the cookies in the oven and set a timer for 10 minutes. In my oven they take 12 minutes to be the right amount of golden but start checking at 10 minutes. You want the very bottom to be a bit golden but for the majority of the cookie to remain pale.

While the cookies are baking, put the ICING SUGAR into a bowl and add the LEMON JUICE, MILK, LEMON ZEST and VANILLA EXTRACT. Stir together. You want it to remain relatively thick so it doesn’t just run off the cookies.

Take your cookies out when they are just beginning to get that post holiday golden glow, set them on a cooling rack and let them chill out. When they’re cool, dip them top side down into the icing and enjoy!

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