Glazed Lemon Cookies

Adapted from Real Simple Magazine

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (reserve the rest in case you need more)
• 2 teaspoons grated lemon zest

Use a hand mixer to cream the butter and sugar together until the mixture is fluffy.

Add the egg yolks, vanilla extract and salt and beat just enough to combine.

Add the flour a little bit a time, this stiffens up the dough a lot and you should only mix it until it’s incorporated.

Take the dough and divide it in half and roll it into logs about 1 1/4 inch in diameter. Make sure that the ends are square or it makes a really weird looking end cookie!

Wrap the dough in wax paper and refrigerate for about 30 minutes to firm up the dough. If you don’t plan on baking them that day you can take the dough wrapped in was paper and put it in a freezer bag, just make sure you bake them a little longer after you cut them from frozen.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Unroll the dough from the wax paper and cut the logs into slices about 3/8 of an inch thick and put them on parchment lined baking sheets. The size the cookies are now is pretty much the size they will be so they don’t have to be spaced out too much.

Bake until they’re a light gold color, about 15 minutes in my oven. Put the baking sheet on a wire rack to cool for about 5 minutes and then transfer the cookies onto the rack to finish cooling

While the cookies are cooling whisk together the confectioner’s sugar, lemon juice and lemon zest to make a glaze. If it’s too runny, add more sugar. Too thick, add reserved lemon juice.

Once the cookies are cool (otherwise the glaze runs right off), dip the tops of each cookie into the glaze, flip it over quickly and put them on a plate to let the glaze set. If you don’t flip them over quickly and instead try to get the extra drips off a) they don’t get enough glaze and b) they  don’t look as pretty. Don’t worry about a little extra glaze, it’s so delicious you’ll want to lick the rest out of the bowl!