- Today we're making my favorite cookie.
This is my lemon cookie recipe,
and you're going to lose your mind.
It's so soft and perfectly pillowy delicious
with a crispy crunch of lemon glaze on top.
It's amazing and you're gonna die.
Hey, you're watching Preppy Kitchen, where I, John Kanell,
teach you how to make delicious homemade dishes
to share with your family and friends.
These lemon cookies aren't gonna eat themselves,
so let's get started.
First off is a somewhat optional step,
but it really makes the cookie.
I am gonna add my sugars and lemon zest
right into the food processor and pulse, pulse, pulse.
This will really release all the oils in the zest
and give you a beautiful lemony cookie.
You're infusing all that sugar with lemon oils,
gonna be amazing.
1/4 cup or 50 grams of light brown sugar, packed.
And then I actually ran out of regular sugar,
so I am using the last bit I have with sugar cubes.
These are for my cocktails, it's a perfect old fashioned.
Click up here for that recipe, if you're so inclined.
1/2 a cup or 100 grams.
And now it's time to zest two lemons.
It's about three tablespoons, but like garlic,
I always add as much lemon as possible.
I'm a lemon fiend.
It's the Greek in me.
So zest, zest, zest.
If you don't have a food processor, that's okay,
you can use same ingredients, the sugar and the lemons.
Zest lemon, mince it up, and then really mash it up
in a bag with the sugar.
These are my current favorite cookies.
And the shocking thing is that Brian likes them too.
I'm literally just making them
because I have been craving these cookies, any excuse.
A Microplane, by the way, is such an essential kitchen tool.
It is very versatile and all kinds of zesting,
grating nutmeg, stuff like that.
I'll put a link in the description box
for the one I like to use, it's really sharp.
Okay, close that up, and let's pulse, pulse, pulse.
(food processor whirring)
It's gonna take some extra pulsing,
because of those sugar cubes, but I'm patient.
(upbeat music)
All right, this gets set aside.
I wish you could smell it.
It is just delightful.
Okay, set it aside and now on to the rest of the stuff.
Now that we zested our lemons,
we can give them a cut, and juice them up.
We'll be using this lemon juice without the seeds
for both the cookie and the glaze.
The glaze is optional, but it is so nice to have that crunch
of the lemon sugar glaze on top of this soft,
just amazing lemon cookie.
Any extra lemon juice can be used for my favorite drink,
lemon water, or a lemon drop.
Those are two different things.
Into a large bowl, I am sifting 240 grams
or two cups of all-purpose flour.
1/2 teaspoon of salt.
One teaspoon of baking soda for leavening.
Two tablespoons of cornstarch.
The cornstarch is gonna give us
kind of like a bit of a cakier cookie
and it's not gonna be flat, it's gonna be, like, raised up.
It's gonna be delicious.
Okay, sift it out, whisk it up.
And now we can set it aside
and go on to our butter-sugar combo.
Now we're gonna cream the butter and sugar together,
so you can either use an electric hand mixer
with a large bowl,
or your stand mixer with a paddle attachment.
Add in 113 grams or 1/2 a cup of unsalted,
room temperature butter.
Add in all that delicious infused sugar.
You could've creamed the butter a bit first, but it's okay.
Just mix it up until it's light and fluffy.
All right, let's scrape the bowl down really quickly,
and we are gonna mix in one egg.
(gasps)
Okay.
After you scrape it down, mix in one egg.
Now two tablespoons of that fresh lemon juice.
Again, I'm gonna scrape it down,
'cause we're adding in a lot of very liquidy things
to a relatively thick butter mixture.
And finally, one tablespoon of lemon extract or lemon paste.
(bright music)
That butter, sugar, egg situation
is totally incorporated now, and you have one option.
If you want to have a yellow lemon cookie,
you can add in some yellow lemon food coloring,
or even some turmeric if you wanted to go
for the kind of, not dye, but still colored situation.
I like mine totally natural colored,
so I am gonna skip that step.
But a lot of people want a lemon cookie that's yellow,
so that's your option right now.
All right, next we are gonna dump in the dry ingredients.
Mix in the flour nice and slow
until almost totally combined.
In fact, you can take a beat
and just scrape the bowl down,
'cause there is a lot of nonsense happening down there.
Almost combined.
Now, we're gonna finish it off by hand.
On any kind of a mixture where you wanna have
like a cakey consistency,
I really prefer just finishing it off by hand.
I have total control of the batter,
and once it's done, it's done.
I'm not gonna walk away, it's not gonna over mix,
and I don't have to worry about having a chewy,
bread-y situation happening.
So just use your spatula or wooden spoon,
and fold in any of the dry mixture that's left.
There's a little bit hanging out in the bottom.
Okay, that's good, I just kind of like patted it
around a bit.
Don't mind me, I'm just putting a little drizzle
of lemon juice on top to kind of make sure
the dough doesn't get dry at all.
You can just cover it in plastic,
but I'm actually gonna cover it with the top
that comes with this.
You could bake these up right now.
Don't do that.
You could leave it in the fridge for like half an hour.
I'm gonna go for about an hour or two.
You could make these overnight.
You could keep the dough in the fridge for a couple days,
just like bake them off as you want them.
But chill the dough, it'll really help you
get a nice cookie that doesn't spread out as much,
and it also gives the flavors a little bit of time
to kind of mix together and settle in.
Into the fridge.
My dough chilled for like two hours,
I was doing other stuff, I was busy.
So, it's ready to scoop out.
Roughly two tablespoon-sized pieces,
and you are gonna have to restrain yourself,
because this dough is so good.
So delicious, I can't even tell ya.
All right, so roll the balls out.
That's how I roll. (laughs)
I love being a dad so I can just do this with impunity.
Okay, they'll spread a bit,
so give them some room to breathe, like two inches or so.
(bright music)
All rolled out, and recipe yielded 14 cookies,
kind of a random number, but delicious nonetheless.
They'll bake at 350 for 10 minutes,
and let's let them cool down.
While they bake, we're gonna make our glaze.
This glaze is so good, and so easy.
It's like not even a recipe,
you just take about a cup of powdered sugar.
It's kind of like how much glaze do you wanna put on.
You can dip the cookies completely.
I'm gonna give them a nice drizzle.
And now I have my fresh lemon juice leftover.
We're gonna add like two tablespoons to get started.
This is so funny, 'cause it turns into like nothing.
You're like, oh, what is this, it's ruined.
But then you just keep whisking, whisking,
whisking, whisking, whisking.
That's all you want,
you just want like a nice drizzling consistency.
So this looks pretty good to me.
So it was one cup and two tablespoons.
But you could make more, you could make it thinner
and more lemon-y if you want.
It's totally up to you.
I love this, because what's gonna happen
is the glaze will set and dry.
So the cookies are like soft and amazing
and I normally hate soft cookies.
This is like a total exception for me.
But the glaze is crispy and crunchy after it sets,
It's gonna be so good.
Okay, set this aside.
I will warn you that the glaze
will kind of like dry out pretty quickly, so--
(phone alarm ringing)
By the time the cookies are done,
although that worked out perfectly.
By the time they're cool enough,
you might wanna have like, just mix it up,
maybe add in a couple drops more of lemon juice.
Let's check on those cookies.
Out of the oven, just let them cool down a bit
before you transfer them to that wire rack.
It's hard, but in the meantime,
you can bake the second batch.
These are cool enough to touch and handle,
so that means it's time for glaze.
Just pop them on to a wire rack.
You don't have to pop them onto a wire rack,
but let's do it anyway.
I'm gonna switch these out, so off you go.
That didn't fall.
And now we can drizzle this over.
Give it a quick mix.
Check the consistency out one last time
to make sure you're happy with it.
You could transfer the glaze to a piping bag,
but this is totally gonna be fine with just the whisk.
Just nice, glorious drizzles.
And if you wanted to wait for all the cookies to be done,
totally do that, I'm a bit impatient.
I want a bite immediately.
This is gonna be so good,
and I love the natural lemon color too.
Remember, you can make a bigger batch of glaze,
and then just dunk the cookies in them,
that's delicious too.
(lips smacking)
I am so excited for this.
This is like my special treat,
I better like snarf them down before anyone else comes over.
But if you liked this recipe, check out my cookie playlist.
All my other cookies that are so good.
Any kind of cookie you could want is in that playlist.
All right, time for a bite.
Oh my God.
Oh my gosh, these cookies are so good.
I'm like, ah, you've gotta try them.
They are like lemon amazing
perfection, perfection, perfection.
If you liked this recipe,
hit that like button and subscribe,
and I'll see you on the next video, ah.