Cookie Swap Blog Hop, 11.2018

Happy Veteran’s Day, friends!

Hope you will join me in taking a few minutes today to think of all we owe to those who have protected our country’s freedoms by serving in the military.  My dad was in the 82nd Airborne shortly after World War II and my Prince Charming was in the Army for 23 years, retiring in 2007.  I love them both.  Salute!

Joining a great group of gals for today’s Cookie Swap Blog Hop.  Thank you, Stephanie at Wife Mommy Me for organizing this fun link-up.  Nothing beats warm cookies out of the oven… if you can get your oven warm…

Let’s Get Cooking:  Lemon Almond Cookies

These lemon almond cookies are a holiday tradition at our house.  When the girls were little, we always set aside a day or night to bake Christmas cookies.  Brennyn’s favorite cookies were caramel heavenlies.  And Lauren’s favorites were these lemon almond cookies I am sharing with you today.  You can’t go wrong with either because both cookies are delicious!

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 1/2 tablespoons freshly grated lemon zest (I added about 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, too)
• 6 tablespoons finely ground almonds
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• Colored sugar in yellow, red, green

Directions

• Set butter out to soften a few minutes before mixing up these cookies.

• In a large bowl, cream together softened butter with sugar using an electric mixer

• Beat in the egg

• Add lemon zest (and a little lemon juice)

• Grind almonds in blender or food processor (I usually use blender but this time used a mallet to pound the nuts inside the package to bits)
• Mix in ground almonds

• Beat in the flour, a little at a time until it is well combined into a soft dough

• Chill covered in the frig for 2 hours

• Pour colored sugar into separate shallow containers or saucers, one for each color of sugar

• Form the dough into 1″ balls
• Roll the dough balls in one of the containers of sugar

• Place on greased cookie sheet about 1″ apart
• Bake the cookies in the middle of a preheated 350°F. oven for 10 to 12 minutes, or until they are golden around the edges
• Transfer them to baking racks, and let them cool

Normally, this would be where I would share a photo of the baked cookies attractively arranged on a pretty plate.  Maybe with a glass of cold milk or hot cup of coffee?  But my oven went out – kaput – this weekend.

It has been trying to give up the ghost for months but just when I would think it was a goner for good, it would rally and start working again.  Tonight, though, I have tried all of the tricks to get it to come on and nothing has worked.  Enlisted PC’s help and he wasn’t able to get it to come on either.

So, Plan B.  Decided to go through all of my Christmas photos from the past 10 years and couldn’t find a single picture of our Christmas cookies to share.  Can’t believe I don’t have one photo of these cookies!

All this to say, there will be no pretty picture of my warm cookies fresh from the oven.  You will just have to use your imagination.  I am so sorry!  While you are imagining how these cookies might look, imagine them as candy canes, too.  In the past, we have rolled 2 small bits of dough into rolls about pinkie finger thick and twice as long.  Then we dip the 2 rolls into different colors of sugar.  Generally one roll in yellow sugar and the other roll in red sugar.  We would twist the two rolls around each other and then shape them into a candy cane.  Really cute once they are baked but pretty big for a single cookie.

Your Turn

Hope you will stop by the blogs of the other hostesses to check out their cookie recipes.  I plan to pin every single one and give them a try.

 

And if you have a favorite cookie recipe, won’t you link up with us below?

Or share in a comment here or on my Facebook page.  Don’t think we can ever have too many cookie recipes, can we?

Last year, when I got ready to bake these cookies, I couldn’t find the recipe anywhere.  Was panicked.  About as panicked as I was tonight when my oven wouldn’t light.  My daughter Brennyn and I scoured the Internet for the recipe and found it, here.  Which isn’t where I originally discovered the recipe years ago for lemon almond cookies but it calls for the same ingredients.

When I was cleaning the house after Christmas, I discovered the recipe had fallen between the cushions on our reclining couch.  Was so glad to have it back.  But when I got ready to make the cookies for this post, the recipe was gone again.  It’s kind of a mini-miracle I was able to post this thing at all!!

Thank you for coming by.  And thank you, Stephanie, for a fun (if a bit challenging with my appliance malfunction) cookie swap blog hop.  Have a great week, gals!

P.S.  The oven came on today, just long enough for me to bake my cookies…

Hugs and kisses,