Lemon Crinkle Cookies With a Twist

My latest baking adventure actually went as planned.  I was quite relieved that things worked out well, after the scramble brought on by the Banana Cotta Crumble!

I have made these Lemon Crinkle Cookies a couple of times and each time, they have hit the spot.  They look like a shortbread cookie.  However, they are moist and chewy on the inside.  The lemon zest and juice make them into a fresh-tasting sweet treat.

I’ve pinned the recipe on Pinterest.  See it and some other recipes for sweet treats that I’ve pinned by clicking here.

I made these for a party last week.  To dress each cookie up just a bit more, I broke out some homemade lemon curd that I had in my freezer.  Honestly, I could have served up the lemon curd all on its own.  It was just full of creamy, lemony goodness.

To see the actual original recipe, click here.  I reduced the sugar a little bit along the way, but that’s really the only change that I made.  Here’s a reprint of the recipe with my two changes of sugar reductions:

Lemon Crinkle Cookies
Makes 2-3 dozen

Ingredients:
½ cups butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar (The original recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar)
½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 whole egg
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
¼ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoons baking powder
⅛ teaspoons baking soda
1-½ cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cups powdered sugar (The original recipe calls for 1/2 cup of powdered sugar)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease light colored baking sheets with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Whip in vanilla, egg, lemon zest, and juice. Scrape sides and mix again. Stir in all dry ingredients slowly until just combined, excluding the powdered sugar. Scrape sides of bowl and mix again briefly.

Lemon Crinkle Cookies Batter

Pour powdered sugar onto a large plate. Roll a heaping teaspoon of dough into a ball and roll in powdered sugar. Place on baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough.

Lemon Crinkle Cookies Rolled in Icing Sugar

Lemon Crinkle Cookies – Almost Ready for the Oven

Since I wanted to dress these cookies with some lemon curd, I pressed each ball of dough down in the center to create a small well.

Lemon Crinkle Cookies with a Small Well

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 before transferring to cooling rack.

Once the cookies were baked and cooled, I dropped a small dollop of lemon curd on top of each one.

Lemon Crinkle Cookies with Lemon Curd

I baked these early in the day so that I could refrigerate them for an hour or so before attempting to transport them to the party.  A little bit of extra cooling worked well to solidify the lemon curd enough so that it didn’t stick to everything that touched it.  I was able to layer the cookies in a container and bring them to the party intact!

I was pretty pleased that everyone tried one and even the kids at the party thought they were tasty!

Lemon Crinkle Cookies with Lemon Curd

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

Are you a fan of peanut butter?  If so, check out this recipe!

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

It is one of my new favorite recipes.  These peanut butter oatmeal cookies are a great way to indulge in some peanut butter without accidentally gorging and eating several spoonfuls at a time (not that I’ve EVER been known to do that!)  Even better, these don’t pack a lot of calories!

Ingredients

3/4 cups white flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

4 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup peanut butter (creamy or crunchy…your choice!)

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup white sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups oats (not the instant kind)

1/2 cup raisins

1 apple, peeled, cored and chopped

Method

Mix up the first 4 ingredients in a bowl (flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon)

Mix the peanut butter, butter, and sugars in a separate bowl with an electric mixer.  Mix until fluffy.

Add the egg and vanilla to the butter mixture.

Add the flour mixture and mix until just combined

Stir in  the oats, raisins and apples

Drop the dough onto an ungreased pan.  Here’s a shot of my cookies before they went into the oven.

I made these into little balls and I got about 40 cookies in total.  Bake them at 325 F for 12-15 minutes and cool on a wire rack.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

I am so happy to have stumbled upon this recipe. I hope you’ll give these a try sometime.  Enjoy!

This post is part of the GiG Spotlight #4: Come Bake With Me.  Thanks to Angela of The Charmed Cupcake and Jessica of Jessiker Bakes for hosting this wonderful event.  Are you wondering what GiG is?  It’s the Girls Inspired Group.  Click on the image below to check out their blog and join!

Sweet Treats

In my new life as a mommy, I finally have some time (during nap time) to get back to something I love…cooking.  I’ve been busy pulling out old recipes that I used to make all the time and also trying out some new ones.  I have a serious sweet tooth, so I have naturally focused on sweet treats to start!  Here are two of my new favorites:

Rice Pudding

Inspired by my mother-in-law, I have started making rice pudding.  I had no idea it was so easy to make!

1 cup of white rice

2 L of Coconut Milk (Vanilla flavoured)

Orange Rind

1/4 – 1/2 Cup of Brown Sugar (or to taste)

Put everything into a pot and bring to a boil.  Then, lower the heat to med-low and cook until rice is soft.

I was so pleased that this recipe worked well with a non-dairy milk. The vanilla in the coconut milk gives the pudding a great taste.  I tried a batch using unsweetened coconut milk and I didn’t really care for the taste of the pudding.   I’ve also tried this with a pinch of cinnamon instead of the orange rind.  It changed the taste of the rice pudding completely and I liked it just as much.

Lemon Cream

I truly love the taste of ice cream.  However, being fairly intolerant to dairy, it’s usually not a good idea for me to indulge in ice cream. Fortunately, I can easily have things like yogurt.  That lead me to try out this recipe for a Lemon Cream last week.

I used:

3 cups of 2% plain yogurt

juice and rind from 2 lemons

3/4 cup sugar

I mixed all of this in a blender.  I then poured the mixture into a shallow pan and put it in the freezer.  When the cream was almost frozen, I put it back into the blender and mixed it until it turned into a hard slush. Finally, I poured this into a container and froze it.  It has turned out to be an excellent low-calorie dessert.  Also, since it doesn’t have any water in it, the mixture does not get icy in the freezer.  I love the texture of this dessert.