Lemon Snaps - May 11, 2011

This week I had both Lila and Allyson join me for baking. Lately Lila has been enjoying store-bought lemon cookies, and wanted to find a recipe to make her own. Allyson and I were game, and I even had most of 2 lemons (one had been zested to make lemon cupcakes for my student worker) that we could work with.

I printed out a copy of the recipe, and Lila set to zesting the other lemon, while I juiced the naked (already zested) lemon. A quick measure proved that the zest from one lemon was not enough, and Allyson ran to the supermarket to get another. While she was gone we measured and mixed the dry ingredients.

Lemony.

When she returned we zested the other lemon (Lila was our champion zester for the evening), and then I juiced the lemon. We were a bit shy of the measure for vegetable oil, and the last tablespoon or so was made up with canola oil. We were also a bit shy on the measure of fresh lemon juice, though luckily we had a bottle of lemon juice. Equally as lucky, we had just enough vanilla extract for the recipe (I didn't have a reasonable substitute if we fell short on that one). Needless to say, a trip the the store to restock is in order.

We mixed in the wet ingredients into the dry, and set out with the rounded teaspoon measure to put cookies on the sheet. The amount of dough called for seemed rather small, but the cookies spread well, and the final product was quite thin (we realized later that the term "snap" should have clued us in to this).

Dough when first mixed.

One thing with the dough is that there was a lot of it - and the amount used for each cookie was small. We ended up with two cookie sheets going into the oven about 3 or 4 times each to bake all the cookies. Additionally, as the dough sat between batches, the oil kept separating from the dough, and we would have to mix it back in before scooping out the next batch.

The recipe gives two cook times, one for soft cookies, which we tried first, and one for more- crisp cookies, which we tried with the second batch. Unanimous opinion of each of us, and my sister, who was hanging out while we baked, was that the more-crisp cookies were better. I had left-over lemon icing from the cupcakes for my student, and though it spread like butter on the cookies, it was a taste delight.

Finished Lemon Snaps.

We came up with other serving options that we would like to try with these cookies, including sprinkling them with powdered sugar, dipping them (or one half) in chocolate, serving as a garnish in other desserts (like ice cream), and serving them with lemon, or other flavored icing, sandwiched between two of the cookies.

Dough - after a while the oil started to separate.

Right after baking, the cookies tasted slightly oily, but when we tried them the next day, that wasn't as much of an issue. These are definitely second-day cookies. Overall, I would love to try this recipe again, though we would consider the problem of the oil - either lessening the amount of oil in general, or replacing some of the liquid oil with a solid fat instead, to help prevent the unappetizing separation we saw.

New tools/ ingredients:  none
Recipes used: Luscious Lemon Snaps recipe from allrecipes.com
Co-bakers:  Allyson, Lila
Date: May 11, 2011