American Dessert
LEMON COOLER COOKIES
INGREDIENTS – COOKIES
¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
2 cups flour
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup butter, softened
1 egg
½ tablespoon fresh lemon zest
4 teaspoons lemon juice
1 cup sugar
¾ teaspoon lemon extract or vanilla extract
1¼ cup confectioners’ sugar
7 packages True LemonTM crystals *
* = Available in stores or online.
SPECIAL UTENSILS
electric beater
parchment paper
2 baking sheets
Makes 48 cookies. Takes 4 hours.
PREPARATION – COOKIES
Add baking powder, baking soda, flour, and salt to medium mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Add butter, egg, fresh lemon zest, lemon juice, sugar, and lemon extract to large mixing bowl. Blend with electric beater set on medium until thoroughly blended. Gradually add dry mix to large mixing bowl. Blend with electric beater set on medium until dough is thoroughly blended. Cover and refrigerate dough for 1 hour 30 minutes.
While cookies cool, add confectioners’ sugar and True Lemon crystals to small mixing bowl. Stir with whisk or fork until well blended. Preheat oven to 340 degrees. Place parchment paper on cookie sheets. Roll dough into little balls about 1″ wide. Place dough balls on parchment paper. Leave a 1″ gap between dough balls. Bake at 340 degrees for 12 minutes or until golden brown. (Baking times for any successive batches may vary.) Let cookies cool for 2 minutes before transferring with a spatula to wire rack or cold plate.
After the 2 minutes elapse, add cookies to bowl with confectioners’ sugar/True Lemon mix. Gently turn cookies until there are completely coated with mix. Let coated cookies sit for 1 hour or until completely cooled. Add coated cookies back to confectioners’ sugar/True Lemon mix and gently turn cookies until are completely coated again.
TIDBITS
1) Snowball fights are fun, especially for the kids.
2) As you can get older snowball fights begin to lose their appeal. For one thing, these fights only when snows sticks to the ground.
3) When that happens, the adults have to shovel sidewalks.
4) We have to drive in snow. Our cars kid snow turns to ice.
5) We have to wear parks, snow boots, and long johns. Oh my.
6) How can we make winter more fun? By injecting the winter months with philosophy.
7) “I think it’s cold, therefore I shiver.” Rene Descartes.
8) Well, that didn’t help much, did it? Rene turned to his chef friend, Pattes de Mouche for help. Pattes added lemon zest, lemon juice, and lemon extract to snow balls. Yellow snow ball fights adorned wintry French countryside and cities. What fun!
9) Until January 17, 1665 a peasant called Jacques Bonnhome threw a rather icy snowball at King Louis XIV, the Sun King. It hit the Big Cheese in the temple.
10) Now, Louis was already quite crabby being a sun king in the middle of winter. After all, what was this point of being king of the Sun whine he couldn’t command it to melt away snow.
11) Anyway, the snowball rather hurt. Already barely hinged, Louis became completely so and declared war on just about everybody.
12) His constant wars drained the French treasury and impoverished the peasantry.
13) Indeed, Louis XVI had to convene the first French parlement in over 100 years to levy taxes on the nobles. The aristocracy objected. Things were said in anger, words that couldn’t be taken back such as, “Ta maman.” Things got out of hand.
14) Discontent burgeoned to such an extent that many people lost their heads and soon we had the ever so messy French Revolution. Things didn’t really settle down until the establishment of the Third French Revolution in 1871.
15) Suitably aware of the terrifying consequences of yellow snowballs, the government banned them. But what were the men who sold the ingredients that made these yellow spheres to do?
16) Unemployed lemon zest, lemon juice, and lemon extract makers almost started an second revolution. But then chef Jaune Poivre baked the Lemon Cooler Cookies of this recipe. French lemon growers now had a market for their goods. Peace and harmony would henceforth reign in France, with the exception of a world war or two. Now, you know.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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