Summer Lemon Sugar Cookies

I've been wanting to post these cookies for awhile but I haven't had the time to write about them. This is honestly a great sugar cookie recipe. These Summer Lemon Sugar Cookies are soft, yet firm, super buttery and keep their shape while baking- which in the sugar cookie decorating world, is a major plus! I made these cookies to challenge myself. To see if I can actually decorate my desserts as well as I can bake them up. I've always found royal icing territory a bit scary and intimidating, not to mention the use of raw egg whites freaks me out a bit. I mean I'm not an artist by any stretch of the word, so drawing on a cookie palette didn't sound appealing. But here I am diving into something new, different and lucky for me....the results were seriously delicious!

I probably wouldn't have done this challenge on my own, but I was contacted by a casting director for a Food Network show. This already made me apprehensive. Is this for real? Am I getting catfished? How much do they want me to shell out!? But after talking to him, it seemed legit. They loved my instagram and all the pictures of my baked goods, but the big question was.... could I decorate? Hmmm... This was a bit of a head scratcher. I can decorate a cake, a cupcake... but a cookie? I wasn't so sure. So he told me that I could try it and get back to him. So with a little push from my husband and Soupbelly, I decided to jump in! I headed out to Michaels to gather some decorating tools, piping tips and meringue powder (I wasn't gonna go all in with the egg whites just yet). I found this sugar cookie recipe from the "Follow the Ruels" blog. It was titled, The best sugar cookie recipe- so how could I go wrong!? It was fantastic! I modified it a bit to create a lemony flavor using lemon zest and some extract. But the texture of these cookies... are definitely whats up! They are are outstanding and super easy to make! I liked that the recipe used both powdered sugar and granulated sugar. This reminded me more of a shortbread cookie, which I believe helped give it a more melt in your mouth feel. I think the hardest part of the whole recipe was waiting for the dough to chill. But thats just my impatient nature. The original recipe said that you can roll them right after mixing, but I wanted to be really really sure.

Once I baked these up, it was time to create the icing and decorate. Deciding when the icing was the right consistency for flooding and piping was probably one of the hardest parts. I needed two separate consistencies, neither of which I've ever tried before! So I must admit I was very conservative with my water amounts, and probably could have used a little more water in my flooding icing, but it all worked out in the end. Making these cookies also took me about...8 hours to do. I don't think it normally takes that long, but I gotta keep practicing! As for the Food Network, I haven't heard back, but there's always tomorrow. I'm love to bake, to try new things and to experiment with flavors. So I think whatever will come, will come and in the mean time, I'll me munching on these cookies!

Give these cookies a try, they are sooo good! And of course follow me on instagram for more pics and a peek in to this Newbie Texas life!

* Adapted from Follow the Ruels

Ingredients

For the Cookie

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1 egg
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp lemon extract
Zest of one lemon
2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
pinch of salt

For the Icing

I used the recipe from Follow the Ruels

Method

Preheat the oven to 330 degrees.
Place the butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer. With the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar until soft and fluffy, about 1 minute.
Mix in the egg, lemon juice, extract and zest until just combined.
Mix in the flour 1 cup at a time until all flour is combined.
Turn dough out on to a sheet of plastic wrap. Wrap up and place in the fridge until ready to use. Dough can be rolled out right away if your in a pinch.
Place a piece of parchment paper down on the counter top. Roll dough out on the parchment paper, using minimal flour to keep the rolling pin from sticking.
Cut dough out to the desired shapes. Bake for 10-15 minutes until just barely brown around the edge.