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.
Just roll these into 1 inch balls on a cookie sheet and bake in the oven for about 10 minutes. For me, it took about 15 minutes to reach a good crispiness. Just be sure to touch the top; it should be dry, cakey, but not spongy.
Snickerdoodle Cookies
This is probably my favorite cookie EVER. Even against the rich chocolate cookie encased peanut butter cookie. Yes you read that right.
Before you read any further, preheat your oven to 400 degrees. If you have parchment paper... I would coat the cookie sheets with that. If not, the cookie will cook fine. You'll just have to scrub the cookie sheets a bit harder than usual.
- 2 3/4 cups flour
- 1/2 t salt
- 2 t baking powder
- 1 cup butter, melted or room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups white sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 t vanilla
Separate to coat cookies later:
- 1/3 cup (66 grams) granulated white sugar
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Anyway, in a large bowl you wanna cream the butter and sugar together. Be sure to beat it well, your going to put the eggs in next which tend to re-cool the butter. Go ahead and put in the teaspoon of vanilla with the eggs and mix it really well.
Once you're done with that, throw in (not literally) the flour, salt, and baking powder.
When that is mixed together, prepare to bake the cookie! In a small bowl, mix together the 1/3 cup of sugar and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon to coat the cookie in. In order to do that, you want to take chunks of the cookie dough, roll it into 1 inch balls, and then roll that ball in the sugary coating. Then you can put those on the cookie sheet, pop it in the oven for 8-10 minutes... and Voila! Goodness on a pan.
If you're not using parchment paper by the way, immediately remove cookies from the sheet. OR they will stick.
