Delicious Lemon Crinkle Cookies

Christmas time in my grandmother’s house was filled with fresh baked goods. Pies, tarts, pastry and cookies… all kinds of cookies. One of my favorite was her lemon crinkle cookies. They were rolled in sugar and baked so they are crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. they just about melted in your mouth.

This cookie recipe give a great based to be able to use other flavors. This recipe has the right blend of lemon juice and lemon zest. Cardamom and Vanilla gives the lemon a lift and plays nicely with all the ingredients for that ‘yum’ factor that makes you wonder about the ingredients as you eat more than one.

Traditional Lemon Crinkles

These lemon crinkles can be made with traditional dairy based ingredients. Using butter and sour cream will  make a cookie with a smooth chewy center. These cookies can be rolled in powdered sugar or Demara sugar for a sweet crispy exterior. They make wonderful cafe cookies when making extra large cookies.

The dough needs to be chilled. My grandmother was a fan of chilled dough. Chilled dough will give a crispy outside and chewy inside. The bonus is your dough can keep for up to 10 days in the fridge. This allows you to make as many or as few cookies at a time as you want.

Vegan Lemon Crinkle Cookies

I love, love dairy products… Yet, with allergies and issues such as Alpha-GAL syndrome many of us in my family have gone vegan or at least dairy free for the health benefits.

Vegan and Plant Based Ingredients

Today’s grocery store holds many options for vegan butter, sour cream and creamers. Some of our favorites include Miyoko’s Vegan Dairy Products and Violife. There are others. For those looking for alternatives there are tasty options out there.

The traditional recipe is shown here and we have also med them with vegan based ingredients. The differences will be highlighted with links and options for vegan based ingredients.

Making the Perfect Lemon Crinkle Cookie

Blending the wet ingredients first and adding the dry ingredients into the wet gives a very creamy texture with no lumps. This process can be followed either with or without using a 7 Quart Kitchen Aid blender. I will admit this was the best Christmas present ever. After years of manually making cookies, breads and pastry, a Kitchen Aid blender is a wonderful investment.

A Few Words About Citrus Zest

Using citrus zest in cooking was a favorite of my grandmothers and there are a few things I have learned along the way.

1. using a combination of juice and zest gives a well-rounded flavor.
2. Too much zest can leave a bitter taste (I have seen bitterness with too much zest more with lemon, lime, and grapefruit more than orange)
3. There are great tools available for making the perfect zest. (We used this lemon zester for this recipe)

Making Lemon Crinkle Cookies

Here is the process we followed to make these cookies.

We put the following ingredients in the mixer. This would be butter (softened at room temp), egg, sugar, vanilla, lemon juice, lemon zest and room temp softened cream cheese in the mixer and mixed at speed #2.

Everything will  blend nicely.  In this case the cream cheese was still a bit cooler than the butter so it took a while to blend into the ingredients.

As the ingredients blended in to a creamy texture you can add the rest of the ingredients. The flour, baking powder and baking soda to the batter. When everything is blended smoothly your batter will look something like this.

After your batter has chilled (for at least and hour, prefferably 2 hours) then you are ready to roll out your cookies into balls, roll them in some demerara sugar or powdered sugar and bake.

Rolling the cookies in demerara sugar will give them that sweet crisp on the outside. Here we rolled half in demerara sugar and half in powdered sugar.

And here is the final product after baking. Enjoy!