Have you ever experienced a bacon cloud? Do you live in a poorly ventilated apartment? Are there units on all sides but one, preventing a cross draft? If so, you probably have experienced a bacon cloud at one time or another. Sometimes you start cooking breakfast before you’ve had your coffee. You forget to turn the fan on over the stove. The entire apartment fills with bacon fumes. You peer, bleary eyed, across the apartment at your squinting husband and realize that a haze has filled the room. Not that bacon haze is so terrible. Let’s get real. But, even bacon can be too much of a good thing. If you ever find yourself in this predicament, bake these cookies. The smell of these lemony delights overpowers the bacon cloud (we may not have stuck to our healthy eating plan this day…) Cookies and bacon could be considered balanced right? Salty and sweet.
You do need a food processor for this recipe. It would be difficult to make without one.
I processed the lemon zest and sugar together until I the sugar was wet and fragrant. SO fragrant. I wanted to use it as body scrub!
Continue Reading
One great thing about these cookies is how easy they are to make. After I mixed the lemon zest and sugar together, I just added each ingredient to the food processor and pulsed it until it formed a ball.
The only tricky part is shaping the dough log to be refrigerated. A bench knife made this much easier.
I formed it into a log, rolled it in parchment paper, then twisted the ends to seal.
The glaze hardens after a couple of hours and forms the slightest little crunch on top of the oh so creamy cream cheese delight.
- FOR THE COOKIES:
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- 2 tbl lemon zest
- 2 tbl lemon juice
- 1¾ cups all-purpose flour
- ¼ tsp baking powder
- 12 tbl unsalted butter, chilled and cut into ½ inch pieces
- 1 egg yolk
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- FOR THE GLAZE:
- 1 tbl cream cheese, softened
- 2 tbl lemon juice
- 1½ cups confectioner's sugar
- FOR THE COOKIES:
- Pulse sugar and lemon zest in a food processor until sugar is wet and fragrant and the mixture looks uniform. It should take no longer than a minute.
- Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.
- Add flour mixture to food processor and pulse with lemon sugar. Just about a dozen quick pulses should do it.
- Place butter pieces on top of the mixture and pulse until the mixture looks grainy and uniform. 15-20 quick pulses should do it.
- In a small bowl, beat the egg yolk with the vanilla and lemon juice.
- While the food processor is running, slowly pour the egg yolk mixture into the dough.
- Keep it running until the dough forms a ball. It should only take a few more seconds.
- Now you can form the dough into a log. It should be 10 inches long and 2 inches in diameter.
- Turn the dough out onto a sheet of parchment paper and lightly knead in any dry bits.
- Form a rough log shape and then roll it out on a clean surface.
- Once the log is smooth and the right size, put it back on the parchment paper and use a bench knife to flatten ends.
- Twist the ends of the parchment paper to seal.
- Refrigerate for two hours or freeze for 45 minutes.
- Once dough is chilled, preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Unroll dough from the parchment paper onto a cutting board and cut crosswise into 16 pieces. Use a big, sharp knife so you don't warp the cookies' nice round shape. The easiest way to make them all even is to cut the log in half, then each half in half, and so on until you get 16 pieces.
- Place on greased baking sheets and bake for 15-20 minutes.
- Let cool for five minutes on baking sheets, and then place on cooling rack.
- FOR THE GLAZE:
- Whisk together cream cheese and lemon juice until smooth.
- Add confectioner's sugar and whisk until smooth.
- Wait until cookies are cool to spoon on glaze.
- Enjoy for 3-4 days
This recipe was adapted from Baking Ilustrated
myrnaluther says
I love hearing you talk about these! Finally, I get to hear you — Ha! These cookies sound so good I can almost taste them. Love ya, Grandma
Lindsey Boubel says
I love you too Grandma! Thanks 🙂
tracy howell says
Very nice. Great photos,
Lindsey Boubel says
Thanks, Tracy!
Whitney @ The Newlywed Chefs says
Lindsey, these look fabulous! Lemon desserts are perfect for spring and the upcoming Easter holiday!
Lindsey Boubel says
Thanks so much!