These cookies have a strong citrus flavour it tastes a bit like oranges to me more than lemon because of the sugar and the icing sugar probably which balances out the sour flavour of the lemon.  They were delicious and I made them on the Fourth of July since it was a Saturday in Cape Town and I was in a baking mood.  It’s an easy recipe and great to make if you have a few lemons around.

 

Cookies

1 ½ cups of flour or self-raising flour ( I ended up using another cup

I suggest you stick to 1 ½ then add more if your dough is too runny)

½ of maize meal 

½ teaspoon of salt (I used salted butter so I omitted this)

¾ cup butter softened to room temperature

½ cup of sugar

1 tbsp finely grated lemon zest

2 large egg yolks at room temperature

1 tbsp of lemon juice

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

½ cup of milk

Filling

½ cup of butter

¼ cup icing sugar/ powdered sugar it’s the same thing

3 tbsp of lemon juice

½ teaspoon of vanilla essence

Method

Preheat your oven to 180 c

I didn’t have baking paper so I used sunflower oil to grease up my baking trays

Technically you should mix the flour, maize meal, and salt if you’re using salt together at this step.

Then mix your egg yolks, and sugar in a separate bowl before adding it to the dry mix finally add the vanilla extract and the milk

I will be honest I mixed everything in one bowl. I also didn’t have an electric mixer at the time so I mixed the dough with a wooden spoon.

And later I kneaded the dough on a clean floured tabletop.

I used a flour-covered olive oil bottle to roll out my dough.

And a small shot glass to cut out the cookie shapes.

After that, I put the cut out raw cookies in the baking trays.

I used two trays. Then it struck me that the weekend was the Fourth of July weekend.  So I added red food colouring to half of my leftover dough and blue to the other bit that was left.

Whilst my cookies were baking I mixed the filling in a bowl.

The cookies take about 30 minutes to bake but check if they are golden brown to be sure.

I then waited for them to cool before making sandwiches with the filling in the middle and a cookie on each side.

The original recipe called for normal flour for mine I used self-rising flour since it was all I had at the time. And even though the lockdown is less strict in Cape Town now I’m still social distancing as much as possible since our Coronavirus numbers are spiking big time. A friend from Chicago once made me cookies and my lemon ones were similar. South African biscuits tend to be harder with a bit more crunch but this recipe was more like American cookies since they were softer.

This recipe was adapted from a food 24 recipe

Thank you so much for reading and if you have any comments please feel free to let drop them below. 

Nikki xx