LEMON SHORTBREAD COOKIES

about 4 dozen

These are a delicious little coffee-tea time treat. I have made them here with lemon, but you can substitute the lemon juice with vanilla extract and leave out the zest. This is a food processor method- if you don’t have one make sure the lemon zest if very fine.


1 cup unsalted butter- room temp

1/2 cup sugar

1 t fresh lemon juice

1 t lemon zest

1/4 t salt (fleur de sel)

2  1/2 cups cake flour sifted

sugar crystals, white or Demerara





Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place the sugar and the lemon zest in the work bowl of a food processor that is fitted with the steel knife. Pulse until the lemon zest is very very fine and well mixed in with the sugar.

Add the butter and process until everything is very creamy and well combined. Scrape down.

Add the flour and salt and pulse a few times, scrape down and pulse again until it starts to clump together.

Remove the dough from the processor and form into a ball- divide it into thirds. You may want at this point to refrigerate for awhile if you think the dough is too soft for rolling into a cylinder.

Roll each portion of the dough out on parchment, a non stick silpat, (or if you are lucky enough to have a marble pastry slab like me) into a cylinder that is about 2 inches in diameter-making sure their are no air pockets in the dough.

Spread the sugar crystals evenly on the surface then roll the dough to coat all sides.

Using a sharp knife, cut into 1/2 inch slices.

Arrange the slices on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silpat and bake until the shortbreads  are golden about 20-25 minutes.

Transfer  to a wire rack to cool.