Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Lemon Ricotta deliciousness

I woke up this morning dreaming about light, fluffy, lemony glazed cookies. I had to have some, and so I spent most of my work day perusing recipes and other blogs (I promise I'll work extra hard tomorrow to make up for it!!). I saw that Maggie had made madeleines last night, and I was jealous. They sounded soo good, but not exactly what I wanted, and also I don't have a madeleine tin. (Mentally added to wishlist, check!)
Then I saw the perfect recipe on food network's site. Oh my goodness.


These are SO amazing. They're exactly what I wanted- light and fluffy and lemony. The glaze is sweet, but not overly so, it just adds that little something. I meant to take more pictures, but I was too busy eating them all.
So, recipe, right- here's mine with the changes I made. If you want to use the food network version, see link above.

(I halved most of it- which is a good, good thing, since there are only two of us and one of us doesn't want to even TRY these delicious little treats.
Don't worry mom, I saved you some.

Cookies:

* 1 1/4 C whole wheat pastry flour (I ran out of all purpose feeding my brand new king arthur sourdough starter- more on that in a future post)
* 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 stick butter, softened
* 1 cup turbinado sugar (just what I had)
* 1 eggs
* 1 cup fat free ricotta cheese (again, it's just what I had)
* 3 tablespoons lemon juice (I accidentally didn't halve this- and I'm really glad I didn't- the lemon flavor was nice and pronounced)
* 1 lemon, zested

Glaze: (Ok here I went really off what the food network had- I wanted something with a bit more body, plus I had used my only lemon on the cookie part, so no more zest)

* 3/4 C powdered sugar
* 2ish T lemon juice
* 1ish T butter, soft (I just grabbed a smallish piece from the box, it might have been a bit more than that)
* Splash of milk

Just mix all of the above together to make the glaze, then set it aside and wait patiently.


Method was pretty much the same as food network, my notes are in italics.



Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

In the large bowl combine the butter and the sugar. Using an electric mixer beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating until incorporated. Add the ricotta cheese, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Beat to combine. Stir in the dry ingredients. Taste dough to check for deliciousness. You may have to repeat 2-3 times to be sure that it is quite delicious. Salmonella be damned.

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Spoon the dough (about 2 tablespoons for each cookie) onto the baking sheets. Bake for 15 minutes, until slightly golden at the edges. I did one baking sheet and one sheet of parchment on my pizza stone. Pizza stone ones rose a bit more and were a bit more crispy on the bottom- I liked both versions equally. Maybe I need to go eat some more to decide which was more perfect. Remove from the oven and let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for 20 minutes. Seriously, if there is a person in this world that can wait 20 minutes for fresh out of the oven cookies to cool before eating them, I don't ever want to meet that person. My directions would say: Remove from the oven. Burn fingers trying to remove cookie from tray. Get spatula, place cookie on plate. Pinch off tiny piece, eat. Decide they have cooled enough. Spread glaze, and devour the rest of the cookie. Repeat.

Also, original recipe says to put them in a decorative container. Mine are currently in some old grocery store gladware- but it doesn't matter, those things will be lucky if they survive the night.

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