Food for Friday: Lemon Crinkle Cookies

Okay, just a disclaimer: I am NOT a baker in any way, shape, or form. So when I say that this recipe is extremely do-able, it is!

Every year for Thanksgiving, my family (on my mom's side) likes to have some sort of cooking competition. We have done chili, desserts, and tailgating food. This year, the theme was COOKIES. I immediately went to Pinterest and began searching for THE cookie recipe. I found some yummy ones: chocolate chip, cake batter, s'mores... but the one that got us the most excited were these Lemon Crinkle Cookies from Whipperberry (click the link for the website and the recipe, or see below for their recipe from the website).

Lemon Crinkle Cookies
By Lauren Brennan

Makes 2-3 dozen (if you don’t get generous in your scooping)

Ingredients:
½ cups butter, softened
1 cup granulated 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
½ cups 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. 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.

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.

*If using a non-stick darker baking tray, reduce baking time by about 2 minutes.

They were super simple to make: you use the basic cookie dough ingredients (butter, salt, flour, sugar, eggs, etc) and add lemon zest and lemon juice. When you make the dough balls, you roll them in powdered sugar. We used a melon scooper to form our dough balls, so our cookies came out a bit smaller than the original recipe's. Once cooled, we sprinkled powder sugar on the tops of the cookies to enhance the appearance and taste!

These cookies at first taste like a regular sugar cookie. Then, as you start to swallow and have the cookie dissolve in your mouth, you get the lemon taste. YUM! They are the perfect size for a sweet, refreshing bite!

Anyone have a go-to cookie recipe for family holidays and events? Because this will most likely be OUR cookie for events from now on!

*Update: our cookie won BEST TASTING at our family's competition! :)

Linking up at TT&J for the Weekend Wrap-Up Party and at Boerman Ramblings for the Tuesday Treasury!