Lemon Cookies with Blueberry Buttercream

I’ve been off work for a bit and I wanted to make something nice for when I was back on campus. My colleague also had a birthday very recently, so I thought about what she would like. One of her favorites is lemon and blueberries, and that seemed like an excellent combination for cookies. I have made cakes and muffins with that flavor combination, and both lemon cookies and blueberry cookies, but I’ve not made lemon blueberry cookies. Now was the time. I found a lemon sandwich cookie with blueberry filling and that felt perfect.

I ended up using a different lemon cookie recipe than the original blog post, and substituted one that I had made previously. The original cookie recipe didn’t provide a useful yield, which was frustrating. I used the lemon cookie recipe found below and it made 3 dozen cookies, perfect for 18 sandwich cookies. That was great, as sandwich cookies are more substantial and I typically make fewer than other types of cookies. You get two cookies! What is there not to like?

The blueberry buttercream filling I kept to the original, and this was her ode to Maine blueberries, which tend to be smaller. I had several types of blueberries in the freezer, including Maine ones! I used those for this recipe as the smaller blueberry worked better with the buttercream. I had extra buttercream but I am sure I can find something to do with the extra icing! These cookies are substantial, but I think are quickly going to become a favorite. The lemon shines through clearly and the blueberry buttercream is excellent. It’s hard to stop eating after one cookie!

Lemon Cookies with Blueberry Buttercream
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
10 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1-1/8 cups sugar
1 tablespoon lemon zest
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
3/4 teaspoon lemon extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Yellow food color, if desired
Powdered sugar

½ cup butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
3-1/2 cups powdered sugar, divided
½ cup frozen blueberries, defrosted

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking pads.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter, sugar, and lemon zest until light. Add the egg and yolk and stir to combine. Stir in the lemon juice, lemon extract, vanilla, and food color. The mixture may look curdled but will come together once the flour is added. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour mixture until the dough comes together.

Shape the dough into mounds (mine were 17-18 grams) and roll into a ball. Roll the balls in powdered sugar and place on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the cookies barely begin to brown along the edges. Allow to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack. Cool completely before assembling the sandwich cookies. It’s helpful to pair the cookies by size at this point, so it doesn’t have to be done later.

Make the filling: in a large mixer bowl, combine the butter, milk, vanilla, and ½ cup powdered sugar. Mix on medium until smooth. Gradually add the remaining powdered sugar, stopping and starting the mixer as needed to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the thawed (and drained) blueberries and mix on low to combine.

Place the buttercream into a piping bag fitted with a larger open tip. Pipe the buttercream onto half of the cookies and top with the remaining cookies.

Cookies recipe from Cooking Classy. Buttercream recipe from It’s Simple!
 

Ginger Sandwich Cookies with Lemon Cream Cheese Filling

Welcome to my 12 Days of Christmas Cookies! Leading up to Christmas I will post 12 different cookie recipes that you or your family may enjoy. I tend to stick with flavors that I connect with the holidays: ginger and similar spices, mincemeat, candied fruit, peppermint, and eggnog. I will say that because of needing to post on my blog, and the fact that I bake a couple of traditional items for the holidays, I started baking my Christmas cookies a while ago. It’s never too early for mincemeat, right?

The ingredients in these cookies are quite standard, and you may already have them in your cupboard. Lemon extract is the most unusual ingredient, but you could use the juice of a lemon or some other substitute. After reading the reviews, I did cut back the amount of lemon extract and powdered sugar. The original recipe called for 2 teaspoons of lemon extract, and that is likely too much for any recipe.

The dough chills for quite a while, and since it contains shortening, it never gets as hard as other doughs I have made. While baking, they look a lot like peanut butter cookies since you make a crisscross pattern which is traditional with other cookies. These cookies would be a good choice for any type of cookie stamp that you may have. This particular cookie, with its combination of ginger and lemon, bridges the gap between a fall cookie and a Christmas cookie, and it couldn’t be any better.

Ginger Sandwich Cookies with Lemon Cream Cheese Filling
3/4 cup shortening
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
2-1/4 cups flour
3 teaspoons ginger
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
Sugar

3 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/3 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
1 teaspoon vanilla

In a large mixer bowl, beat the shortening and brown sugar on medium until light. Mix in the egg and molasses. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight.

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Shape the dough into 1-inch balls and roll in sugar. Flatten with a fork in a crisscross pattern.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, until set. Allow to cool before forming into sandwich cookies.

Make the filling: in a large mixer bowl, combine the cream cheese and butter and mix on medium until incorporated. Add the powdered sugar, lemon extract, and vanilla. Beat until the filling is smooth, but is strong enough to sandwich the cookies together. Match the cookies up by size and spread the filling on half of the cookies, then pair them with a similarly sized cookie.

Recipe from Carol Walston via Taste of Home

Lemon Gingersnap Sandwich Cookies

 I love baking with molasses and spices. Nothing makes you house smell so good, and so festive! This is a bit of a variation on a ginger cookie. The cookie itself isn’t so different, it is quite traditional with the addition of some lemon extract and zest. You then sandwich the cookies together with some lemon-flavored buttercream, and that makes them extra special. You could serve the cookies as is and not make sandwiches, but it only took about 10 additional minutes to make beautiful sandwiches.

This recipe does require that you refrigerate the dough overnight. As the dough contains oil, it doesn’t get too hard, which is nice. It’s the molasses that requires the time to meld, and your cookies will taste better if you give it that time to rest. Molasses tastes fine right away but give it a day or two and it tastes so much better! Since I am trying to get ahead on my baking, while another batch of cookies was in the oven, I made the dough for these, then finished them the next day.

The cookie dough is soft, even after refrigeration, which makes them that much easier to work with. I rolled mine in larger sanding sugar, but you can also use granulated sugar. I like the crunch that sanding sugar lends to the cookies (and I had some on hand). For the buttercream, I did alter the recipe slightly. The original recipe called for 1 cup of butter, which seemed like a lot for 2 cups of powdered sugar. I cut the butter in half, used about 2-1/2 cups powdered sugar, and also added a little lemon extract. The buttercream tasted great, although it was on the stiffer side to pipe. Together, these cookies look picture perfect and taste that way too!

Lemon Gingersnap Sandwich Cookies
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
Zest of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon lemon extract
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
Additional sugar

½ cup butter, room temperature
2-3 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon lemon extract

In a small bowl, whisk together the oil, sugar, and egg. Beat until combined. Add the molasses, lemon zest, and lemon extract and stir to combine.

In a large mixer bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and ginger. Add the oil mixture to the dry ingredients and stir on low until combined. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Shape the dough into 1-1/4-inch balls and roll the balls in sugar. Place them on the prepared baking sheet.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, until set. Cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Once the cookies are cool, make the filling: in a large mixer bowl, combine the butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and lemon extract. Beat until smooth. Sandwich two cookies together with the filling.

Recipe from The Beach House Kitchen

Custard Cream Blondies

I have two blondie recipes that are quite similar, both from Olive Magazine and both using classic British biscuits/cookies. I posted one a couple a weeks ago, and this is the second recipe. This recipe uses custard cream biscuits, which as the classic tea cookie in the UK. I normally have little trouble finding custard creams, but when I first looked everyone was sold out. Thankfully, they were available on my most recent trip to the British store. I know that I can have difficulty finding some items during the COVID Pandemic, and I am sure that it true for stores as well.

This recipe, like many British recipes, calls for two different types of sugar. It calls for Muscovado sugar and golden caster sugar. I thought I was good, but I actually have Demerara sugar, which is not what this recipe uses. Caster sugar is like our regular sugar, or perhaps superfine sugar, so I just substitute sugar. The “golden” part indicates some molasses, but brown sugar is too moist. Muscovado sugar is sugar with molasses, so for that you could use brown sugar. In the end, I simply used (caster) sugar for the two different types of sugar.

This recipe has you make the dough on top of the stove and then bake them. I melted the butter, sugar, and custard powder and then let it cool. I added the first egg and I immediately got scrambled eggs. Obviously, my mixture was too warm, so I tried it a second time and gave the mixture lots of time to cool. That worked, although it had slightly crystallized and I had to stir it a lot to get it mixable. Mixing this by hand is quite the workout, but I suppose it is good for me to do that occasionally. My pan is slightly smaller (20 x 29 cm, and a tart pan) so I baked mine on a cookie sheet and had a small amount of spillage. They came out great and they are very tasty, with a good custard flavor. It would be interesting to see how these differed if you used different sugars, but that’s a job for another day.

Custard Cream Blondies

175 grams butter
325 grams sugar
¼ cup custard powder
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
250 grams self-rising flour*
15 custard cream biscuits, chopped and divided
150 grams white chocolate chips

Heat the oven to 355 degrees. Line a 20 x 30 cm baking pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large saucepan, melt the butter, sugar, and custard powder over medium-low heat until smooth. Remove from the heat and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Stir in the eggs, one by one, combining well after each addition. Add the vanilla and flour and mix with a spatula until smooth. The mixture will be very thick.

Stir in 2/3 of the chopped custard creams and the white chocolate chips and stir to incorporate throughout the batter. Spread the mixture evenly in the prepared pan and top with the remaining chopped custard cream biscuits.

Bake for about 30 minutes, until the cookies are golden, and a thin knife inserted into the blondies comes out almost clean. Allow the blondies to cool before cutting into squares.

* I make my own self-rising flour by combining 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon baking soda, and ½ teaspoon salt.

Recipe from Olive Magazine

How to Woo a Brit: Custard Creams

I decided for the month of August I would post British cookies/biscuits. We perhaps would be traveling there now if the situation were different, but it is what it is. My husband is British, and we often go to the British store that is just a couple of towns over. I love to look at the candies and chocolates there, but then tend to actually purchase things that we need, like tea. One of the things that I have seen there are Custard Creams, and we may have even purchased them once. When I saw this recipe for a homemade version, I thought that would be fun to bake.

The cookies are very simple, although many people don’t have custard powder on hand. I do, and I use it from time to time. This recipe uses the largest quantity of custard powder I have ever encountered, half a cup, but I have plenty. I always forget that custard powder has a pink tinge to it, and I wondered if that would show up in the cookies. I didn’t, thankfully.

One difference between my cookies and store-bought ones is that mine are quite puffy, which does make them a little difficult to eat. I guess you could flatten them, and that would help. The filling is a small quantity but is just enough to fill the cookies. My batch made 24 cookies, or 12 sandwiches. My husband ate a cookie before they were filled, and I said that they were paired. He took care of that unevenness quickly! They are great with the filling, and for some reason make me think of Christmas cookies rather than custard cookies. Either way, they are fabulous.

How to Woo a Brit: Custard Creams

1 1/3 cups flour

1/2 cup Bird’s custard powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup butter, room temperature

1/2 cup powdered sugar

2 tablespoons butter, room temperature

1/2 cup powdered sugar

A few drops of vanilla

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a medium bowl combine the flour, custard powder, and baking soda; set aside. In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter and powdered sugar on medium for 3 minutes. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour mixture.

Shape the cookies into small rounds and place on the prepared baking sheets. With the tines of a fork, press a cross-hatch design into the top of each cookie.

Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, just until the bottom of the cookies begin to color. Allow to cool completely before proceeding. 

Make the filling: in a medium bowl, whisk together the butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla until smooth.

Mix the butter, powdered sugar and vanilla until creamy. Use the filling to sandwich together two cookies of equal size.

Recipe from Christina’s Cucina

Coconut Sandwich Cookies

I never know what to bake in the summer. This summer hasn’t been too hot, which I really appreciate. We’ve had a couple of warm days and I have made a no-bake recipe or two, but it’s still been ok in the house to bake. With me working limited hours in the summer, I don’t want to make a large batch of anything. I have made a lot of bar cookies in 9” pans, but I also thought about making sandwich cookies, as those recipes don’t typically yield a large batch.

I had pinned this recipe quite a long time ago, and it doesn’t call for any strange ingredients. I checked to make sure that I had coconut extract, and I didn’t, which surprised me. I could have sworn I had some, but who knows. I picked up some new extract, the only coconut extract that the store had (despite having seriously 20 different types of vanilla extract). These were also quick to make, as but the time the cookies are out of the oven and you make the frosting, they are ready to be made into sandwiches.

Like all sandwich cookie recipes, this only makes about 15 sandwiches. I had more frosting than I needed, but I prefer it that way. Sandwich cookies aren’t usually large, but when you put two cookies together and add frosting, you have a very substantial cookie. The original recipe didn’t call for coconut in the cookie dough, so I added a little extract to the dough. I think that was the right call, as these cookies have a wonderful coconut flavor. I realize that not everyone likes coconut, but if you do, this is a terrific recipe!

Coconut Sandwich Cookies

2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

1/4 cup sugar

2/3 cup packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon coconut extract

1 egg

1/4 cup butter, room temperature

2 cups powdered sugar

1-2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon coconut extract

1 cup shredded coconut

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside. In a large mixer bowl, combine the butter, sugar, and brown sugar. Mix on medium until light. Add the extracts and the egg and stir again on medium to combine. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour mixture. Shape the dough into 1-inch balls and place on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, until lightly browned. While the cookies are warm, flatten slightly with a metal spatula. Cool completely.

Make the frosting: in a mixer bowl beat the butter until smooth. Gradually add the powdered sugar, mixing until crumbly. Add 1 tablespoon milk and coconut extract, mixing on medium until smooth. Stir in the coconut. If the mixture is too dry to sandwich cookies together, add additional milk, 1 teaspoon at a time.

Sandwich the cookies together with the coconut frosting.

Recipe from Crazy for Crust