Lemon Party

crinkle cookies for citrus haters

Welcome back Broiler Heads. It may be obvious to some of you that I’ve got a ton of lemons on my hands and am looking for all kinds of ways to use them up. As soon as it gets chilly in southern California, everyone’s trees get suddenly full of citrus and you want to make use of this great glut while you can. We have tons of organizations that will come and collect all the extra fruit and donate it food banks so that none of it goes to waste. Pretty fucking cool right?

This week’s sweet treat is the last in the lemon party, I swear. You can use meyer lemons, which are a little sweeter, or regular lemons. It won’t make a big difference. These cookies are super fucking cute with their crinkly exterior and are *just* lemony enough. Sometimes lemon desserts, particularly ones that use a lot of lemon extract, can taste almost like a caustic antiseptic which isn’t what anyone wants. The lemon in these is soft, light, and almost floral so if you’re cautious about lemony dessert, you should give this one a try. Tell the kids they’re yellow snowballs and watch as they giggle and then absolutely demolish the plate.

Meyer Lemon Crinkle Cookies aka Yellow Snowballs

Makes about 18 cookies

¼ cup olive oil

¾ cup cane sugar

¼ cup almond milk

2 tablespoons ground flax seeds

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon lemon zest, packed (this was about 6 meyer lemons for me)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon ground turmeric, for color

Cane and powdered sugar for decorating

In a large bowl whisk together the olive oil and cane sugar. Next whisk in the almond milk, ground flax seeds, lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla extract until everything is incorporated and there aren’t any secret chunks of flax hiding out.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and turmeric if you’re using it. It’s just to give them a little more of a golden color but if you don’t have it, it’s def not important enough to run to the store to get. Now fold the dry ingredients into the wet until you have a well-mixed dough without any giant dry spots. If the dough is looking a little dry, add a tablespoon or two of almond milk to the mix just until it comes together. Cover the bowl and stick this shit in the fridge for at least 2 hours and up to overnight. These cookies need to chill for two reasons: 1. It will give the lemon zest time to flavor more of the dough 2. The dough spreads too much in the oven resulting in flat cookies unless it’s nice and cold when it goes in to bake. So don’t skip this step k?

When it’s time to bake, warm up your oven to 350 degrees and grab 2 baking sheets. Lay out two small bowls and fill one with some cane sugar and one with powdered sugar. Scoop out about a ping pong sized amount of dough and roll it into a ball. Next roll it around in the cane sugar and then the powdered sugar until the dough is nice and coated. The cane sugar layer keeps the dough from absorbing the powdered sugar while it bakes and ensures you get those cute as fuck crinkles you want. So this isn’t about sweetness, I swear.

the top cookie wasn’t rolled in cane sugar, just powdered sugar. the bottom was cane sugar then powdered sugar, as instructed.

Keep going until you run out of dough. Bake the cookies for 15-18 minutes, until the bottom and the edges are golden. Let them cool on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack.

These guys will keep for at least a week but I’ve never had them in my place for longer than 3 days.

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Thanks again for joining us here in The Broiler Room. We know that times are tough and we really appreciate you spending your limited time and increasingly stretched budget here with us. We don’t take it lightly and it really does mean a lot. Next week we’ll be back with another sweet treat k?

Michelle and Matt