Lemon Tea Cookies

What's up England?

It’s no secret that I’m not British, but there are many things that British people do that I also enjoy. Things like:

• Drinking tea.
• Drinking tea with milk in it.
• Eating cookies with tea.
• Speaking in a British accent.

Lemon Tea Cookies

Yield: 30 cookies

Prep Time: 15 minutes + chill time

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar + plus some for dusting
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 pinch of salt

Helpful Equipment:
Stand Mixer or Hand Mixer

Directions:

1) Cream together butter and powdered sugar using a hand mixer or stand mixer.

2) Once the mixture is light and fluffy, add in the lemon extract and continue to stir.

3) In a separate bowl, mix together flour, salt and baking powder.

4) Slowly mix in dry ingredients into butter mixture. Stir until just combined.

5) Wrap dough with plastic wrap and store in the fridge for an hour.

6) Break off a large tablespoon sized piece of dough and roll it into a ball with your hands. Gently flatten the ball and put it on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Repeat. You should get about 30 cookies out of the dough batch.

7) Bake cookies at 375 for 10-11 minutes. They should be lightly browned around the edges.

8) Let cookies cool completely and dust with powdered sugar before serving.

Easy Cookies

These cookies are about as easy as cookies can be. There are two interesting things about them that give them a very unique texture.

1) They have powdered sugar instead of regular sugar. They aren’t quite as sweet because of this and have a much lighter texture.

2) There aren’t any eggs in the recipe. This again makes the cookies really light and also makes them nice and crunchy which is a good texture for a tea cookie.

I've used a lot of butter this week...

The first step to these cookies is just like 99% of the cookies you’ll ever make. You need to cream together the butter and sugar even though the sugar is powdered.

Just use a hand mixer or stand mixer and beat the butter and sugar until it’s a nice, light consistency.

Easy...

The Extract

I wanted to add a very simple flavor to these cookies and a tiny amount of lemon extract did the trick.

You don’t need much of this stuff. It’s very flavorful.

Mix the extract into the butter mixture. It’ll make your kitchen smell like a lemon bomb went off.

Very strong stuff.

The Finished Dough

In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, salt, and baking powder and then slowly mix it into the butter mixture.

Once it’s combined, your dough is done. Don’t overmix it. Once you can’t see any more flour, it’s ready to go!

Done.

The dough should be easy to mold, but pretty dense.

Take all the dough out of the bowl and wrap it in plastic wrap. Let this chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, but an hour would be best.

Cool it down.

Making the cookies

You could actually roll this dough out and cut out different shapes if you wanted to.

I went the easy route though. I just made my cookies by breaking off a small piece of dough about the size of a large tablespoon.

Then roll it gently into a ball using your hands.

Form a ball.

Gently press this into a disc shape and lay the cookies out on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

You should get 15 cookies per sheet because these guys are smaller and they won’t really expand that much.

Should get 15 on a sheet.

Bake these guys at 375 degrees for about 10-11 minutes.

They are done when the edges are lightly browned.

Small is okay here.

Let these guys cool a bit and as they cool they will get nice and crispy.

Then give them a dusting of powdered sugar and serve them with your favorite cuppa tea!

Really light and tasty.

These will smell way more lemon flavored then they taste. As they bake they lose some of the lemon so the flavor ends up being subtle which is nice.

These are very light cookies. Perfect for an afternoon snack without being super-sweet or super-decadent.

So Mate. If you fancy a tea cookie, give these a jingle!