Lemon Curd Cookies, or "Whoops, I set the house on fire"

Well, I didn't set the house on fire, but I did see smoke billowing from the oven and had to open the front door in sub-zero temperatures!  It was exciting, and the cookies were salvageable, which is what really matters.

So before I tell you the tale of the disastrous cookies, take a gander at the lovely side-board I got from a creepy guy with two grungy Chihuahua's in East Jesus Nowheresville Massachusetts.



It's lovely and for $70 was a steal.  The cabinet on the left side was locked and the guy who sold it to me said the key was lost years ago.  Well my dad, because he's awesome, went and had a skeleton key made for it which WORKED and we were amazed to find the cabinet full of all this:



I am sad to report that all the liquid based things here were long since gone.  I opened a few to make sure, but considering we found it with a stash of birthday cards all from 2004, it was pretty obvious that they were no good.  However the dry stuff was still good (see that clip on the silver bag?) and I've had quite a few nice cups of chai.  The seasoning is for spreads and dips, so may be used this summer.  I'll try to salvage the bottles for my home-made gifts, however the jars were full of stuff so solid and... wrongly colored, I just tossed them all out as is.

Now on to the cookies!

Lemon Curd Cookies

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups unsalted butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
zest of 2 lemons
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

Lemon curd (you will need less than a full jar)
Confectioner's sugar (optional)




In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on high speed, cream the butter until fluffy and pale. Add the sugar in 3 additions, beating on low for 2 minutes after each addition. Beat the egg yolk, vanilla, and zest into the butter mixture until well blended.





Sift the flour and salt together onto a sheet of waxed paper. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix on low speed or stir with a wooden spoon just until blended.






Scrape the dough out onto a work surface and divide into 4 equal portions. Shape into disks, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours (I just stuck them in the freezer for 15 minutes).



Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.  Remove cat from parchment paper and shoo cat from room.  Remove cat from parchment paper.  Scream in frustration and lock cat out of the room.



Remove dough from refrigerator and let stand at room temperature for 15 minutes. Roll dough to 1/8-1/4 inch thickness. Using round cookie cutters (I used a small one of about 2 inches - don't forget the cookies grow when baked) cut out dough and place on cookie sheets. Drop as large of a blob of lemon curd as you can while still being able to cover the bottom cookie with a top cookie, on 1/2 of the cookies. Cover the lemon curd and bottom cookies with the remaining cookies and press to seal. You will have to stretch the top cookie a little bit, just make sure there is a good seal.  Refrigerate unbaked cookies for 5 minutes.



If you look closely, you can see the lemon curd I used (home-made) was too runny.  If I had used more solid curd, the HORRIBLE BURNING would not have happened.  Actually, I microwaved the leftover curd for a minute and that made it the perfect consistency.  Smelled a bit funny, but yeah, it was delicious on mini croissants.



Bake for about 10 minutes or until the edges are just beginning to turn brown.  Dust with confectioner's sugar.

BROWN, YOU SAY!?  Oh yeah, they browned all right.  I didn't use the confectioner's sugar at the end.  I mean, how do you dress up that horror?  I broke the burnt parts off every single cookie and you know what?  They tasted damn good.  I enjoyed them, my fiancé pretended to enjoy them, and my co-workers enjoyed them.



I plan on making them again, only without the fire part.  Fire bad.

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1 comments:

Macy said...

These look really yummy, Abby! I have never eaten or attempted to make lemon curd, but I suspect that I would like it.

And while I have your attention, I wanted to show you this website that I'm currently obsessed with. http://www.younghouselove.com/ It's this blog that a young couple has done about renovating their house, but they also have a section about their back yard wedding, which made me think of you. Not sure what your style is, but I thought they had some cute ideas. Hope you enjoy & keep up your food blogging--I love to read about what other people are up to in the kitchen :)

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