Labor Day Lemonade Cookies

About a week before Labor Day I came across a recipe for Lemonade Cookies. Since I was going to a friend’s house to BBQ during the holiday weekend I thought the recipe would be the perfect treat on a hot day.


I set out to make the treat on Friday night so they’d be ready to go when I left for the BBQ on Sunday morning. The first batch appeared to come out well. They were light in color and texture and had just the right amount of lemon tartness. The recipe said to make sure the cookies were dry enough to put the recommended glaze on, so I decided to wait until the morning to make the addition. Before I went to bed Friday night I gathered the cookies off the baking rack and piled them on a plate and threw foil overtop.

Saturday morning I awoke early to make a second batch of cookies and add the glaze to the first batch. When I went to separate the cookies from the plate they were all stuck together. This is not what was supposed to happen! My poor baking skills/judgment strikes again. I was able to peel apart and salvage a few cookies from the first batch, but the rest just broke apart or looked too ugly to bring with me.

The second batch of cookies came out nice. I set them out, and left them, on baking sheets and let them sit while I went to work. When I got home that night I made the glaze, which didn’t quite work according to the recipe. The recipe asked for a few drops of whole milk, plus 1 Tablespoon of lemonade concentrate to go along with the 1¼ cups confectioner’s sugar, which made a goopy mess. I ended up using about 2 Tablespoons of lemonade and 3 Tablespoons of whole milk to make the glaze thin enough to spread over the cookies, but not so thin that it flowed right off the cookies.

That night instead of putting the cookies on a plate under foil I left them out on the rack to REALLY dry out.

The cookies turned out nicely. They were a little bit too much like a muffin/scone for my liking and needed a cup of coffee or milk to accompany them. I think next time I make them I would lower the baking powder from ½ teaspoon to ¼ teaspoon. But overall, the flavor was light and refreshing and would be worth trying again.

As for the cookies that crumbled apart, I didn’t see any reason why they should just end up wasted in the garbage, so I improvised. I placed about 3-4 cookies in the bottom of a small trifle bowl added a cup and a half of vanilla instant pudding and topped it all off with some sliced strawberries. This made of a few nice desserts for my roommate and I and no cookies were wasted.