Lemon Sandwich Cookies with Lemon Icing Filling – Easy Recipe
Homemade lemon cookies with a layer of sugar fondant are very easy to make. Really, all you need is everyday ingredients you already have at home, plus a bit of enthusiasm. These cookies smell wonderful and are perfect for a cup of tea at home. If you like, you can use any filling you want as the layer between two cookies pressed together like a sandwich.
At first we wanted to bake a layered sponge treat, like a lemon pastry, with a layer of cream or sugar fondant. But for various reasons we settled on a drier kind of bake. I made these with my daughter, and I'm very grateful to her for it. In the end we got very tasty, very fragrant sandwich cookies with a delicate lemon flavor. They go perfectly with tea, and with them my morning coffee was simply superb.
The dough contains no baking powder, so the cookies come out fairly dense but not hard. The flavor comes from lemon zest and concentrated lemon extract – it adds aroma, but you can do without it. You can add plain fresh lemon juice to the filling.
As a rule, cookies like these are baked fairly dry, so they keep for a long time. Then again, homemade lemon cookies never last – they get eaten quickly. They don't have to be round: if you have cookie cutters in various shapes, you can even hang the dry cookies on the Christmas tree for New Year. Or tie a stack of them with a ribbon as a gift for friends – that's what they do in Finland, for example, treating each other to piparkakut gingerbread cookies.
I recommend a rich, dense sugar dough rather than a crumbly shortcrust like the one for grated pie. It contains sugar and a little butter, which makes it sweet and not too hard.
Let the prepared dough rest a little so the gluten in the flour can swell, and it's best to work with it while it's cold. To shape the cookies you need cookie cutters. I once bought a set of about a dozen in all sorts of shapes. They were inexpensive, yet surprisingly handy and made of sturdy plastic. Bake on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
Something to drink
Ingredients
12-15 pcs
- Wheat flour 2 cups
- Butter 130 g
- Sugar 0.5 cup
- Powdered sugar 0.5 cup
- Egg 1
- Lemon 1
- Vanilla, lemon extract to taste
Step-by-step recipe
- First make the cream filling, then put it in the fridge. To keep the fondant soft, we add a little butter. If the filling isn't chilled, it will be hard to spread and will run. Put the powdered sugar in a small bowl, add 1 tbsp of softened butter and squeeze in 1 tbsp of lemon juice.
- Mix the fondant thoroughly with a spatula or fork until completely smooth. You can use a mixer if you like, but carefully – the dry mixture loves to fly everywhere. You should get a white paste. Don't add water; if necessary, it's better to add a few drops of juice. Put the cream filling in the fridge.
- While the lemon cream chills, mix the softened butter (about 100 g should be left), sugar (white or brown), vanilla, concentrated lemon extract and the grated zest of half a lemon. Add the egg. Beat everything with a mixer fitted with dough hooks until completely smooth.
- Sift the wheat flour. Add about 1.5 cups of flour to the creamed mixture and keep kneading. Then it's best to continue kneading on the table by hand, adding flour in small portions. The dough should be fairly firm and not stick to your hands or the table.
- It's better to let the dough chill a little – it's easier to work with that way. Dust the table with flour and roll out a small piece of dough with a rolling pin into a sheet 5-7 mm thick. Cut out cookies with the cutter of your choice. Knead the scraps together again and use them for more cookies. By the way, if you decide to make lemon cookies in different shapes, try to get an even number of each.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and transfer the cookies onto it. Preheat the oven to 160-170°C and put the baking sheet in. The cookies bake for 12-15 mins. Keep an eye on them so the bottoms don't start to burn.
- The baked cookies should cool completely. The filling should spread easily. Spread one cookie with the cream filling – 0.5-1 tsp is enough. Cover with another cookie and press lightly. The filling shouldn't squeeze out of the gap. If the filling runs, chill it longer.
- If you like, you can also cover the tops of the lemon cookies with the same cream, like a glaze. Or dust them with powdered sugar before serving. The number of cookies depends on their size and the thickness of the dough. Keep in mind that each “sandwich” needs two cookies.
- Lemon cookies are best kept in a cool, dry place. But it's better to bake them in small batches so they stay fresh. If you like, you can use lime or orange instead of lemon.
| Yield: | 12-15 pcs |
| Calories: | 380 kcal per 100 g |
| Prep: | 30 mins |
| Cooking: | 30 mins |
| Ready in: | 1 h |
| Category: | Baking › Sweet Baking |
| Cuisine: | European |
| Rating: |
⭐
⭐
⭐
⭐
⭐
5
(11)
|