Lemony Lemon Snowball Cookies
I am a sucker for lemon {pun kinda intended}. Lemon is my weakness. There I said it, I love anything and everything lemon. Growing up my Mom used to make the best sweet yet tart lemon meringue pie and I am pretty sure that is where my love of lemon started. I would ask her to make it every year for Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter or really any special holiday.
Bakeries, lemon pastries, and I am all over them. Lemon curd, oh don’t even get me started, I could eat that stuff by the jar, and most certainly have. I love lemon. These snowball cookies are no exception, they are fabulously lemon. There is no extract just real, wholeness, lemon flavour from fresh juice and zest. They are ridiculously easy to make, like you could probably do it in your sleep. They aren’t hard like some traditional snowball cookies can be, they are almost fudge like in the middle which makes them coat your entire mouth with all the lemony goodness in the best possible way.
They have become a holiday tradition, but you don’t need to just make them at Christmas, they are pretty darn good all year long. Although, since coated twice in that snowy like icing sugar they do make a beautiful cookie to present at your holiday baking table. There isn’t much else to say besides pucker up sweet heart you are going to fall madly in love with these beauties. Oh and if you can’t have nuts just skip the almonds in the recipe, they had a nutty flavour but they are absolutely just as good without.
Lemony Lemon Snowball Cookies
Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
3 Tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
Zest of 2 lemons
juice of two lemons
2 tsp pure vanilla
1/2 cup finely chopped almonds (I ground mine in a food processor)
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, for coating
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl whisk together flour, cornstarch and salt, set aside.
In the bowl of an electric stand mixer, mix butter on medium speed until creamy, 3-4 minutes. Mix in 1 cup powdered sugar. Then add in lemon zest, lemon juiceand vanilla extract, mix for another 1-2 minutes, {it probably won’t fully come together but don’t worry that is ok! Once you add the dry ingredients it will all mix up perfectly}.
With mixer set on low speed slowly add in flour mixture and mix just until combined. Then mix in almonds. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes in the fridge.
Once chilled, scoop dough out 1 Tbsp at a time and roll into a ball, place balls on a parchment lined baking sheets, spacing cookies about 2-inches apart and bake in preheated oven for 18-20 minutes.
Remove cookies from oven and transfer to baking rack, cooling for several minutes then while cookies are still warm, pour 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar into a bowl and roll cookies in powdered sugar. Transfer back to the wire rack to cool fully. Once fully cooled, roll in powdered sugar once more, this time to generously coat (at this stage you can even press the powdered sugar into the cookies to give them a really nice thick coat). Store cookies in an airtight container.