Lemon Crinkle Cookies

I'm taking a quick break from my cookbook recipes to bring you a recipe from the only other place that anyone ever finds a recipe...Pinterest, of course! I came across this Lemon Crinkle Cookie Pin not long after I attempted a lemonade cake and thought I'd give lemon baked goods a second look.


I've now decided that lemon was just destined to be in baked nommies. In both my cake and these cookies, my tongue has cried, "GIVE ME MORE LEMON!" These cookies turned out amazing as is, but next time I may double the amount of lemon juice for a more tart kick!


Ingredients
½ cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 tsp lemon zest (I hate zesting lemons, so I omitted this!)
1 Tbsp lemon juice
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp baking powder
⅛ tsp baking soda
1-½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup powdered sugar


Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease light colored baking sheets with non-stick cooking spray and set aside. If using a non-stick darker baking tray, reduce baking time by about 2 minutes.

1. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.


2. Whip in vanilla, egg, lemon zest, and juice. Scrape sides and mix again.


3. Stir in all dry ingredients slowly until just combined, excluding the powdered sugar. Scrape sides of bowl and mix again briefly.


4. Pour powdered sugar onto a large plate. Roll a heaping teaspoon of dough into a ball and roll in powdered sugar.

My dough was really sticky, so I didn't roll it into balls. I just scooped about half a rounded Tbsp of the dough then plopped it onto the powdered sugar with my fingers. Trying to touch the dough as little as possible, I pushed it around with a finger in the sugar until coated then quickly transported it onto the baking sheet.

5. Place on baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough.

I hate the idea of wasting delicious powdered sugar, so after I had rolled all the dough in it, I topped all them all of with the leftover sugar!

My counter-space is so small that I have to do a lot of prep work on the stove. Since the oven was preheated, you can see that the first few balls of dough have already melted!

6. Bake for 9-11 minutes or until bottoms begin to barely brown and cookies look matte -- not melty or shiny. Remove from oven and cool cookies about 3 minutes.

7. Transfer to cooling rack.

Eat them!

These cookies stay soft and moist for days after baking, so don't worry about eating all 2-3 dozen immediately!