Sunday, March 10, 2013

Lemon Curd Thumbprint Cookies

We're all about lemon. Even four-year-olds in the family are obsessed with the flavor; after noticing Graham III squeezing about 20 lemon wedges into his water and chatting about how much he loves anything and everything lemon, we made our friend Max's find, Meyer lemon budino, for him. We're willing to bet that he's going to be into these cookies just as much. It's the kind of basic recipe that you throw together in the stand mixer when you have no time, and it's completely unreasonable, but you still want to make dessert anyway. We based it on this great recipe and just upped the lemon-vanilla quotient and used jarred lemon curd to save time. (Don't they kind of look like eggs? Might be a nice addition to late-March Easter celebrations...)

Lemon Curd Thumbprint Cookies

1/2 cup cane sugar
2/3 cup unsalted butter (Plugra works well in this.)
1 egg
zest of 1 Meyer lemon
juice from 1 Meyer lemon
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon vanilla powder
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
jar of lemon curd (or make your own)
1 tablespoon powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugar in the stand mixer. Add egg and mix. Add lemon zest, lemon juice, vanillas and mix. In another bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together. Add to wet mixture and mix until just combined and flour is not showing. Chill dough in fridge for an hour or two. Scoop out dough with a small spring-loaded scooper and roll dough into a ball in your hand. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Press into the middle of the cookie with your thumb. Bake at 350 degrees for 13 minutes. Take out the cookies and spoon lemon curd (microwave it for 20 seconds first if needed to soften) into the indentations; you may need to press into the indentations again with a spoon. Bake for 3 more minutes. Allow to cool and set. Sift powdered sugar over them. (Makes about 20 cookies.)

3 comments:

JFloColman said...

i love lemon! these look delicious!

Katrina @ Warm Vanilla Sugar said...

These cookies look awesome! Love this recipe!

Eileen said...

Now THIS is the reason to make a batch of lemon curd out of all the lemons on our tree! Love it. :)