Week Thirty-Four: Lemon Sugar Cookies

(This week’s recipe came from “The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book”.)

This week marked the first time I’ve brought baked goods into my new coworkers in Times Square. Now that I’m not driving myself to work, the baked goods I take in for my coworkers have to be fairly easy to transport. I don’t know if any cakes will make their way into that building. Pies, maybe, but the idea of taking a cake on the subway makes me cry.

So, for the first experiment, I thought cookies would be good. And what’s more sturdy and stable than a sugar cookie? But I couldn’t make just a boring old sugar cookie – and my cookie cutters are in storage, so I couldn’t even make cute shapes. I’d have to amp up the flavor.

Luckily, “The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book” had variations on their sugar cookie recipe that included a Lime Sugar Cookie. Sounded pretty delicious to me!

The recipe started with rubbing some lime zest into sugar, which the cookie dough balls would be rolled in prior to baking:

Next, a fairly straightforward cookie dough was made, with the addition of some more lime zest:

The first batch of cookies didn’t turn out so hot. I made the balls way too big and forgot to flatten them out before baking. So they turned out like this:

I made the cookie dough balls smaller the second time around and remembered to flatten them out. I also sprinkled some additional lime sugar on top to give them an extra crunch:

Much better. Unfortunately, I didn’t take very many pictures as I needed to get out the door with these cookies! My coworkers seemed to enjoy them quite a bit:

Last night, I made the next baked good in my series: S’mores Cupcakes. I plan to write about them this weekend. Highlight: Check out the reviews of Crumbs Bakery on Yelp! One of my coworkers said my cupcakes were better than the ones at Crumbs.