Lemon Sunshine Thumbprint Cookies

It has been dark here. Thankfully, not snowy (which is weird) but man, has it ever been dark! I had all that fabulous leftover lemon curd I made which got me thinking…

See, I am not someone who actually celebrates Christmas. But I am someone who celebrates the return of the sun. Next week, our days will FINALLY start to get longer. Even though we will be walking into winter, officially, the sun will begin to return to our lives and that is something I can celebrate! With my Lemon Sunshine Thumbprint Cookies.

I started to make this recipe for cookies and then realized I totally creamed too much butter into sugar, thus, screwing up the recipe. It must have been the sun deprivation getting to me but I refused to give in and start over. The following is a guesstimate as to what I ended up baking, so, proceed with caution.

I creamed together 10 tbsp of unsalted butter with 3/4 cup of sugar. Then I added 1 egg and 1 tsp of vanilla extract.

I added 1/2 tsp of pure lemon extract. If you do not have any, just add some lemon zest.

I sifted together approximately 1 3/4 cups of flour with 1/4 cup of cornstarch, 1 tsp of baking powder and 1/4 tsp of salt. I gradually added the dry ingredients to the wet.

You want your dough to be pretty stiff but moist. That is what I was going for since I had walked off the recipe. I used my mini ice cream scoop to divide the dough. I rolled them into balls and placed them two inches apart on a parchment-line baking sheet.

I used the end of a wooden spoon to make the divot in the cookies and baked in a 350F oven for 10 minutes.

After they cooled off I dunked them in some lemon-flavoured icing sugar for a nice coating. Just get around 1/2 cup of icing sugar, add a few drops of fresh lemon juice and the zest of a lemon. You want it to be very thick so that it will completely coat the cookie. Fill with homemade lemon curd or jam!

Little baskets of sugar-coated lemony sunshine. Just what I need right now to commune with the very distant sun. Tangy, tasty and fantastic, my husband who usually enjoys baked goods containing vast amounts of chocolate really loved these cookies! In fact I had to hide them from him to make sure I had some for taking photographs! That is high praise. I am also in love with these cookies, although draped in a sugary snowy glaze, they fill me up with the flavours of summer.

I will never lament a green Christmas but I do mourn the loss of natural light (especially when I am trying to take photos!). My little plate of cheerful cookies reminds me to hold on, winter can not last forever. Soon the sun will begin its return.

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