- Hey, I'm John Kanell
and today on Preppy Kitchen,
we're making some amazing lemon crinkle cookies.
So let's get started.
First up, I want one cup
or 200 grams of granulated sugar into a large bowl.
Sugar is nice,
but we're gonna make it amazing with lemon zest.
Let's grab one to two lemons and we're gonna zest this up.
Personally, I read one tablespoon of lemon zest
as the zest of two lemons,
but you could add one if that's what you prefer.
Tap that in.
Whenever you have lemon in a recipe, do not forget the zest.
If you go to a lemon lover's house,
you will see naked lemons all over the place
because they're delicious in basically everything.
I also want half a teaspoon of salt.
This gives me some balance in this.
And now it's the fun part.
Use your clean hands
and we're gonna work the lemon zest into the sugar
and the sugar has a sandy consistency,
so it's going to abrade the lemon zest
and just work some of the oil out.
This white sugar
is gonna turn the most beautiful, light pastel color
as it's infused with all the oil from the zest.
This is a very relaxing and therapeutic thing to do
by the way.
You're just like, lemon smells, it's like very tactile.
You gotta do this.
Give those lemons a nice roll
just to release some of the juice
and then give those a slice.
And I need about a quarter cup of lemon juice,
that's 60 mils.
No seeds, please.
I should say, I need exactly one quarter cup of lemon juice,
that's 60 milliliters.
It's basically the juice of the biggest juiciest lemon ever
or one and a half lemons.
Fun fact.
The acid and lemon juice basically melts marble.
So be careful if that's your countertop type.
Wipe, wipe, wipe, clean, clean, clean.
Into my sugar, I'm adding two room temperature eggs.
Oh my gosh, that color, I love a nice yolk.
If you have chickens at home, you can, of course,
let them roam free, eat all the bugs,
but you can also feed them marigolds.
You can give them like marigolds in their food
and it helps make a really yellow, amazing yolk.
One half of a cup of melted, unsalted butter,
it's 113 grams.
So these lemon crinkle cookies are like lemony, amazing,
but they have that wonderful fudgy consistency
that normal crinkle cookies have.
There's a tradeoff with that.
One.
Oh my gosh, this tastes amazing, I love the texture,
but it doesn't happen immediately.
They need to chill, at least four hours,
but I would just do it overnight.
Make this ahead of time and have it all prepped out
and then you can roll 'em and bake 'em off as you need.
Quarter cup of lemon juice.
Already, you can see,
this looks nothing like a normal cookie dough,
it's just pure liquid.
Yes, we're gonna add the flour,
but it definitely needs that chill time
so that it doesn't melt in the oven into a giant puddle
and the flavors will intensify
and really work together with that additional time.
I'm also adding in a teaspoon of vanilla.
If you don't want to, you could skip it,
it'd still be delicious,
but I love vanilla and lemon together.
Set this aside, grab a smaller bowl.
We're gonna get the flour together.
We really just have to mix the flour
and the baking soda together,
but nobody wants a giant bite of baking soda,
it needs to be well distributed.
So, into a smaller bowl two and a third cups
or 280 grams of all purpose flour
and half a teaspoon of baking soda.
Baking soda needs an acid to react to
so it can reach its full potential,
really make things a little bit more leavened.
The acid, of course,
is coming from the lemon juice in this case,
but, in your baking adventures,
you'll find a lot of different acids
like brown sugar, cocoa powder,
things that you wouldn't think of as a acidic,
but they do react with baking soda, even buttermilk.
Whisk that up so it's nice and combined
and now we're gonna pour the dry ingredients
into our amazing lemon mixture
and just fold it together.
Be very gentle.
You want these to be fudgy, melt in your mouth amazing.
And we just don't wanna activate the gluten and the flour
and overwork the batter.
A simple fold with your spatula is all you need.
You just wanna see the flour disappear
and as soon as that happens, you can stop, you're all done.
These have like a really nice,
kind of like natural lemon color,
especially if you have amazing yolks.
If you wanna amp it up,
you can add a couple drops of food coloring
or even a little bit of turmeric.
That'll give you a little boost of color.
Turmeric, my mom says turmeric.
When both your parents are immigrants,
you have a couple of mispronunciations, it's a seep in
and you have no idea that you're saying things incorrectly.
Let me know which one's right, I have no idea.
Anyhow, this is nice and mixed in.
I cannot wait to make this into cookies,
but for now, I'm gonna wrap it up, pop it into the fridge
and we'll be back tomorrow in an instant.
One day later,
my cookie dough is all set up nice and firm.
In a medium bowl,
I'm adding about three quarters of a cup of powdered sugar.
It's not exact because it's just for rolling.
Tap, tap, tap.
It's not coming out, but I know if I force it, it'll go
(imitates flour puffing)
Ideally, you'll have two baking sheets
lined with parchment paper or silpats
and a one and a half tablespoon triggered scoop.
You could also use heaping tablespoons
and just roll the balls.
It doesn't really matter.
So now, ooh, look how pretty that looks.
Now we're gonna scoop our dough.
Ooh, it's still so soft.
That's how you know it's gonna be delicious.
Give it a quick roll.
And then, we're going to roll this in powdered sugar.
And the secret to crinkle cookies
is a double roll of powdered sugar.
So, we're gonna do one roll right now
and then maybe one roll later, we'll see.
If you dust your hands with powdered sugar,
you won't have as much of a mess.
Like I said earlier, this dough it's really like fudgy
and melt in your mouth,
but that means it's so soft.
So be very gentle with it.
And you wanna work quickly.
We're gonna do these cookies 12 at a time
and it doesn't hang out in the refrigerator between bakes.
If you want,
you can freeze the unbaked cookies at this stage
rolled in powdered sugar.
When you're ready to bake, just roll them one more time
'cause the powdered sugar will all disappear
and then bake 'em off.
I'm making these lemon crinkle cookies for the channel
because I had a request from one of my viewers.
They asked for these cookies
after seeing my regular fudgy crinkle cookies,
which were also amazing by the way.
Very happy to oblige because I love lemon everything.
If you take a look, you can see the cookies I rolled first
are already absorbing the powdered sugar,
which means when you bake them,
they're not gonna have that crinkle look,
they'll be kind of just yellow-colored, which is fine,
but we want the contrast.
So, before going into the oven,
you're gonna give your cookies one final roll
with like a lot of powdered sugar on top
if you want to have the most contrast.
If you don't care, don't bother.
That's all melting away.
So, just a nice heaping batch of powdered sugar on top.
Just for fun,
I'm putting the second batch into the freezer for 15 minutes
and then baking it.
I wanna see if it affects the spread
or the pattern on top at all.
These lemon crinkle cookies are ready to go into the oven,
350 for 12 to 14 minutes
and you'll see that signature crinkle look
and the bottoms are just starting to take some color.
In you go.
(lighthearted music)
So the cookies basically came out the same.
My little white patches are a little bit larger
on the frozen batch.
It doesn't really make much of a difference
in the taste or consistency though.
I've been waiting for these cookies for two days,
it's time for a bite.
Mm.
That melts in your mouth, it's so full of lemon flavor,
it's zingy and amazing.
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe
and if you like this video, check out my cookie playlist.