Lemon Sandwich Cookies

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This lemon shortbread cookie recipe is perfectly lemony, crumbly, buttery with a hint of cardamom spice. They are exactly what you need to make as Spring is comin’ in hot!

There are few greater combinations than citrus and shortbread and these melt in your mouth lemon shortbread cookies are here to prove that point. This recipe features delicious cardamom-spiced shortbread as well as a both silky and easy lemon curd recipe!

As flowers begin to dawn the trees again, pollen is EVERYWHERE, and the daylight lasts a bit longer, there is a change in the air. I absolutely love this time of year! Without fail it seems like every year when Spring approaches I find a new sense of hope, motivation and excitement for the year to come! This year my hope and excitement was accompanied by this gorgeous and delicious (if I do say so myself) lemon shortbread cookie recipe.

My trouble is your fortune with these bad boys because I had to workshop this recipe quite a bit to get it just perfect. The original recipe was going to be a thumbprint cookie, but I’m glad my troubleshooting landed us here; to a cookie sandwich, because now we all get to enjoy perfect lemon curd sandwiched between two buttery crumbly, perfectly spiced shortbreads, and I promise, no one is complaining!

Ingredients:

Hopefully you won’t need to hit the store for too much as most of the ingredients you’ll need are likely to already be in your possession. Nevertheless for this recipe you will need:

• Unsalted Butter
• Granulated Sugar
• Powdered Sugar
• Brown Sugar
• Eggs
• Vanilla
• All-Purpose Flour
• Salt
• Lemons
• Cardamom Spice

Additional Tools:

One of the features of these cookies is that they have a beautiful swirl design. That design is made possible by using a piping bag and an open star 1M piping tip to pipe the cookie dough onto the cookie sheet. These items can be purchased at your local Michaels or, like I do, on Amazon. If you don’t want to buy these tools the recipe also works well scooped out like regular cookies. I discuss this more in detail below.

Another helpful tool is a kitchen sieve. If you prefer your lemon curd to be smooth instead of maintaining the lemon zest pieces I recommend passing it through a kitchen sieve before setting it to cool.

I recommend starting by making the quick lemon curd recipe so that it has enough time to cool.

For the Easy Lemon Curd Recipe:

You’ll never be intimidated by lemon curd again after trying mine! It’s simple, quick, and so good I promise you will have the hardest time not eating it all before assembling your cookies! Plus save yourself some time and make it in advance if needed!

Step 1: Add sugar and lemon zest to a small/medium saucepan that is off the heat. Give it a vigorous whisk. The goal is to infuse the oil from the lemon zest into your sugar.

Step 2: Add egg yolks to the saucepan and give the mixture another vigorous whisk until the mix has lightened in color a bit.

Step 3: Pour in the fresh lemon juice and whisk until combined.

Step 4: Place the saucepan over low/medium heat making sure to whisk constantly. Pay special attention to the edges of the saucepan, the curd would most likely burn here if anywhere. Whisk constantly until the mix thickens. You’ll know it’s done when it reaches a hollandaise sauce consistency. It will thicken even more in the refrigerator.

Step 5: Pull the lemon curd off of the heat and mix in your cold butter that has been cut into small pieces. Mix until butter has melted.

Step 6 (optional): Pass the lemon curd through a kitchen sieve to get rid of any lemon zest.

Step 7: Place in an airtight container and let cool/thicken in the refrigerator for 1 hour. It will last in the fridge for up to 5 days.

For the Shortbread Cookies:

The cookie dough comes together very quickly and can also be made in advance if needed.

Step 1: Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

Step 2: Combine butter, brown and granulated sugar in a mixing bowl and mix on medium speed until creamed together.

Step 3: Add egg and vanilla and mix until combined.

Step 4: Add flour, powdered sugar, salt and cardamom and mix until there are no more streaks of flour. The dough should be slightly sticky.

Step 5: At this point you have two options, you can either choose to scoop the cookies into 2″ balls and place them on your prepared baking sheet or fit a piping bag with an open star 1M tip by cutting a straight line across the tip of the bag a little less than 1″ down the bag and adding the piping tip, pushing it until it fits tightly. Then proceed by adding the cookie dough to the bag using a spatula and piping the dough in 2″ swirls onto your prepared baking sheet.

I highly recommend piping the cookie dough. It’s a relatively simple step and it makes the final result much more beautiful, plus something about the piping is oddly therapeutic!

Check out my YouTube video on this recipe to see exactly how you fit the tip to the bag and pipe out the dough!

If you choose to scoop out the cookie dough into balls, it is now time to chill them for just 20 minutes. Trust me, I know this step is the one you want to skip the most, but the chill time is part of what makes this recipe so perfect; it helps preserve the shape of the cookies in the end!

If you opted for the piped design now is time to pipe the dough into 2″ swirls onto your prepared baking sheet. You should end up with 24 cookie swirls. Then place them in the refrigerator for 40 minutes to 1 hour. Just as I told my scoopers, this chilling step is crucial. It’s even more crucial for you piped designers because the chill time is what allows us to maintain that gorgeous swirl all the way through baking. If you take them out of the refrigerator too early you will lose the definition in the swirl. You won’t lose flavor, so if you’re feeling impatient be my guest, but the wait is worth it my friend!

Step 6: Bake chilled cookies in your oven that has been preheated to 350^oF (180^oC) for 12-14 minutes. The cookies should just be starting to turn a golden color on the outer edges.

For the Assembly:

If you’ve made it this far and haven’t eaten all of the lemon curd, now’s time for the assembly.

Assemble these Lemon Shortbread Sandwich Cookies by placing about 1 Tbsp of lemon curd in the center of the flat side of 12 of your cookies. Then place the flat side of the other 12 on top of the curd and push down slightly until the lemon curd reaches the edges.

The cookies will store well in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 10 days or at room temperature for up to 5 days. If you store them in the fridge, I recommend letting them sit at room temperature for a bit before eating instead of eating them straight out of the cold refrigerator. This will give the cookie some time to get back its crumbly texture as the butter in the cookie will soften!

Enjoy with a cup of tea, and as always, send me a comment letting me know how it goes!

Can baking be therapeutic?

I often talk about baking being a therapeutic hobby but I’d like to share more about why I feel that way as well as how it can become a relaxing hobby for you!

When I bake, it’s my creative time. I may put on my favorite nostalgic movie or tv show in the background, or a Spotify playlist titled “French café” and leave my troubles behind.

Sometimes I pour myself a glass of wine and light a candle. Then, with the mood set, the mixing of batter, kneading of dough and smoothing of icing is my only care in the world.

When I say baking is therapeutic, sometimes people respond saying “not for me it isn’t!” I completely understand why someone might feel that way. There have been plenty of times where I spend hours on something only for it to fail or something breaks that shouldn’t or I forget to clean as I go and am left with a disastrous kitchen to clean. 

So I should in reality, have a caveat to my “baking as therapy” claims…

Baking is therapy when you curate the experience to be relaxing.

How do you curate that relaxing experience for yourself, you ask?   

How to make baking therapeutic…

1.  Prepare your mind–know that it’s okay if the cake doesn’t rise, or the butter wasn’t chilled enough. Shift your mindset from seeing your failures as mistakes to seeing them as opportunities for learning.

 

1. Prepare your space–I cannot and will not bake on top of a messy kitchen. If I were to do this I would be starting from a place of stress! Take an extra 10 minutes to clean any dishes in the sink and wipe down the counters, this small effort will pay you back greatly in brain space and clarity.

 

1. Clean as you go! I’ll tell you the one way to make baking stressful and tiresome, is to not clean as you go! After I use each ingredient that I no longer need, I put it away. 

After each major step in the process, I wipe down the counters and put dishes that are no longer needed in the sink. If there is chill time or baking time I don’t sit, I do the cleaning then. Make this shift and you’ll really notice the difference! 

By the way, this last tip really helped me when I was on The Great American Baking Show–and the crew that cleaned up behind us made a point to tell me that my workspace was always so clean they didn’t have much to do! 

I would reply by saying “it’s how I stay sane in this tent!”

 

Additional suggestions:

*Maybe try printing off the recipe instead of looking at it on your phone, tablet or laptop and use this time to unplug from technology for a few hours

**Invite friends or family over to share your creation with you. Time spent with loved ones over food is a universally special experience

And that’s how I discovered baking for my mental health. If you try any of these suggestions, let me know how it went for you! I’m really invested in spreading this message to others in hopes that baking will enhance your lives more than it already does!

Happy Baking loves.