Lemon Balm Cookies

These make surprisingly good crunchy cookies!  I'm normally a fan of chewy, cakey, and soft cookies but found myself craving one after another after I had one of these.  What intrigued me is putting Lemon Balm, an aromatic herb that looks and grows like spearmint.  The flavor is nothing alike though!  It smells and tastes like sweet lemons, minus the tangy citrus.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, especially if your oven takes as long as mine to preheat.

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 t vanilla
• 1 1/4 flour 
• 2 t baking powder
• 1/4 t salt
• 1/4 cup finely chopped lemon balm

I got out a stick of butter, stuck it in the microwave to melt while I measured out a cup of sugar.  In a large bowl I combined these to make the basis of almost all cookie making: melted buttery sugar cream goodness.  When it's creamed to your satisfaction, go ahead... take a finger lick of it, you know you want to.

Then when your done licking your chops, add an egg and a teaspoon of vanilla.  For those of you like me who love vanilla, this is my adjustment which is double what this recipe "should" call for.  Now beat it again, beat it real good.   The lighter and more velvety it can get, the better.  In fact, when your done it should be about a lemon color.  This is the time to add the dry stuff.

Put in 1 1/4 cup flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt and mix it up nice.  The dough will be pretty oily because of all that butter.   But it shouldn't really stick to your hands.  At this point you can add lemon balm, but if you don't have it don't worry.  You can also use lemon verbena or lemon mint for this!  Or, just substitute the vanilla with lemon extract if you really want that lemon kick.  If that's the case, I would put in 1/2 tsp of Lemon extract.

Posted in: cookie,dessert,lemon