Lemon Cookies with Drippy Blueberry Icing

It’s very spring like out there and this is what inspired me to make these citrus infused cookies. Bursting with lemon flavour from lemon extract and lemon zest, they taste incredibly fresh.

I then thought of making a scrummy blueberry filling for the cookies and making them into sandwich cookies. Blueberries and lemons go incredibly well together and I knew the flavours would pop.

I made my lemon cookies from a recipe adapted from realhousemoms.com. The bits of lemon zest give the cookies a real zingy bite. They’re lovely and crackly on top, crisp on the outside and slightly chewy in the middle as I prefer my cookies.

I then set about making my blueberry icing. This did not go so well and it was a very loose concoction. It was made from fresh blueberries and cream cheese, with a bit of butter and LOTS of icing sugar.

It tasted of sweet, fresh blueberries and spread on the cooled cookies well. But it seemed to have a mind of its own. The icing just wanted to leak out. This made for an extremely flavourful cookie, but a very messy one also.

I tried freezing the icing, which did firm it up and piped on the cookie well. It held its shape a bit better. Perfect as a kind of ice cream sandwich, but it didn’t hold its shape for long and the blueberry mix went south once more.

Still, if you don’t mind a bit of mess then this is the one for you. Or forgo the icing and just enjoy a tantalisingly zingy cookie, perfect at this time of year, or anytime really.

Here’s how I made them…

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Lemon Cookies with Drippy Blueberry Icing

by Stuart Vettese March-24-2016

Zingy lemon cookies with a blueberry cream cheese filling that oozes a bit!

Ingredients

• 225 grams unsalted butter, softened
• 400 grams granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons lemon extract
• Zest of 1 and a half lemons
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• half teaspoon baking powder
• half teaspoon salt
• 300 grams plain flour
• 100 grams full-fat cream cheese
• 25 grams unsalted butter, softened
• 75 grams fresh blueberries, mashed with a fork
• 250 grams icing sugar

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan) and line two cookie sheets with greaseproof paper.In the bowl of a stand-mixer beat together the 225 grams of butter and granulated sugar until light and fluffy.Add the egg and beat until combined. Add the vanilla and lemon extract and zest and mix until combined.Sift together the bicarb, baking powder, salt and flour and add to the wet mix. Stir by hand until no dry streaks are seen.Drop 1 tablespoon amounts on to the cookies sheets, slightly apart as they do spread a little.This batch makes around 48 cookies, so I baked two sheets twice, getting 12 on each sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.Allow the cookies to cool completely.To make the icing, beat together the cream cheese and butter until smooth.Add the mashed blueberries and stir through until combined.Add the icing sugar until the mix is thick. Add more as necessary.Chill the filling for at least one hour.Spread a little onto the underside of one cookies and place another one on top, pressing together gently.Enjoy!

Details

Prep time: 40 mins Cook time: 12 mins Total time: 52 mins Yield: 24 sandwich cookies

I'm entering these cookies into this week's Bake of the Week, hosted by Sarah at Maison Cupcake and this week Helen at Casa Costello.