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Ingredients
- 1/2 cup vegetable shortening, room temperature
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
- 1-1/2 tablespoons freshly grated lemon zest
- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (from about 1 lemon)
- 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1-1/2 teaspoons double acting baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- Confectioners' sugar for dusting the cookies
Preparation
Step 1
1) In a bowl with an electric mixer cream together shortening, butter and the sugar. Add vanilla, lemon extract, lemon zest and the juice. Beat until mixture is smooth.
2) In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and blend well. Add to butter mixture and beat on low speed until well blended. Form mixture into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 2 to 24 hours.
3) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Roll heaping teaspoons of dough into balls and place about 2-inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Flatten balls slightly with palm of your hand. Bake cookies in batches until edges are just golden, about 10 minutes per batch. Transfer cookies to racks to cool. Dust with confectioners' sugar before serving. Yield: 5 dozen cookies.
The original instructions for this recipe, which, by the way, comes from an old issue of Gourmet magazine, called for rolling the dough into a log and refrigerating it overnight prior to slicing cookies for baking. If you use a knife on the chilled dough, the slices end up looking like amoebae and you won't get the lovely slices you are looking for. Years after first working with this dough, I learned to avoid this problem by using buttonhole thread or dental floss to cut through the log.