Lemon and Almond Cookies: an eggless recipe

While holidays are fun, they do bring with them the perfect conditions to increase your waistline. Everybody has the holiday cheer on, so there is drinking and more drinking accompanied by eating and a lot more eating, followed by dessert and some more dessert. The weighing scale is my worst enemy these days.

I think its very clever that new years falls after christmas- first falter by over eating and then make amends by making resolutions to lose the weight you gained during the holiday season. Of course, if you are like me, those kind of resolutions come with an expiry date of a week.

Adding to your calorie intake are these lemon-y eggless cookies that I am sharing with you today. Since a lot of people ask me for eggless cake, cookie recipes I thought I would share this one out while the holiday season still gives you the excuse to bake some in your kitchen. Christmas brings out the cookie monster in all of us and even though I might be a little late in sharing this recipe with you this year, I am a year ahead in sharing the recipe for next year’s christmas round up. So pin it, share it, save it for your next year Christmas baking to-dos.

Of course, you could make them anytime of the year. Or when it is time to break your new year resolution of weight loss, you could bring these bad boys out. Just saying. Don’t blame me if you do though.

While these are lemon-y perfection, these are not the best cookies to use for cut out cookies, because they do spread a little while baking. If you want shapes use the no fail sugar cookie recipe. Or the Coconut and jam cookie dough. Both these cookies kept their shape. This recipe for lemon and almond cookies are fine for simple round cut outs, but anything complicated might not work with these cookies. I still was able to work with them, but as you can see from the pictures, the trees did not hold their shape completely after baking and since I suck at free hand decorating, they were not the best decorated trees out there since I could not follow the cookie outline to form perfect trees. And also because I need work on my piping skills.

The original recipe from Donna Hay magazine calls for them to shaped in wreaths, and I could see how that would be a better idea since even if they spread they would still have a hole to put the ribbon in  (I just reread that and I hope the meaning is not construed some other way) If you do choose to make wreaths (as shown here), keep them simple and dust them with icing sugar and hang on your tree (for next year Christmas, of course).

Also make sure you when you roll the dough out you do not roll it thinner than a thickness of 5mm, any thinner and these will be more like crisps than cookies.

5.0 from 1 reviews

Lemon and Almond Cookies: an eggless recipe

 

Print

Prep time

50 mins

Cook time

20 mins

Total time

1 hour 10 mins

 

Serves: 12

Ingredients

• 90g butter, softened
• 1 cup (220g) raw sugar (I just used granulated because thats what I had)
• 1 cups (120g) almond meal or ground almonds
• 1 cup (150g) all purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• grated rind of 1 large lemon
• juice of 1 large lemon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• pure icing sugar, for dusting (this I skipped and used Sweetopia's royal icing recipe for decorating the cookies)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 325F.
2. Line a cookie tray with parchment paper.
3. Place butter and sugar in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer for about 5 minutes until pale.
4. In another bowl mix almond meal, flour, baking powder, and add it to the creamed butter and sugar, also adding in lemon juice, lemon rind and vanilla extract.
5. Beat for a further 2 minutes until combined.
6. Roll the dough out between 2 sheets of baking paper to about 5mm thickness, and refrigerate for 30 minutes or until firm.

If making wreaths:

1. Using an 8.5cm (approximately) fluted cookie cutter, cut rounds from the dough as close to each other as possible, so that you get maximum cut outs from the first dough rolling itself. Place these on the prepared baking tray. Using a 3.5cm (approximately) round cookie cutter, cut a round from the centre of each cookie. (If you choose to make any other shape, which I would not recommend with this recipe,do keep the shape a simple one without any complicated design.)
2. Gather the cut out rounds and offcuts of the dough. Roll out again to a 5mm thickness and repeat the process till all dough is used up. Keep in mind any subsequent rolling will yield tougher and more spread out cookies.
3. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes until golden (If you make smaller cut outs baking time will change). Remove from oven and allow to completely cool on trays. Dust with icing sugar to serve.

Wordpress Recipe Plugin by EasyRecipe

3.2.1269