Gluten-Free Dairy-Free Soy-Free Corn-Free Crisp Lemon Cookies

They are my son’s favorite cookie and I make them ONCE a year for him… and Santa. I have suggested other cookies on other years but I generally get this look as if I have lost my mind. Santa needs lemon cookies. Unfortunately this is not a fast recipe. It calls for more than 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon rind. For those of you not familiar with the process that means grabbing a lemon in one hand and a mini-grater in the other and then slowly grating off the rinds of 6 or 7 or 9 lemons. I personally need to take my time with this or else by the time I get to third lemon I am no longer in a holiday state of mind.

They are a reduced fat cookie, heavily adapted from a recipe from Cooking Light back in the 1990s. I am not sure how they would work without the eggs. They are a very crisp cookie so in theory egg replacer should work, but I have not yet had the guts to try it.

If you celebrate Christmas, have a great one!

Ingredients
For the lemon sugar
2 tsp lemon rind tightly packed
6 tbsp sugar

For the cookies themselves
5 tsp lemon rind tightly packed
2 cups sugar
1 cup coconut oil
1/3 cup lemon juice
2 eggs
4 tsp vanilla
4 cups Namaste GF Perfect Flour Blend
2 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp xanthan gum
½ tsp salt

Equipment
Electric mixer with whisk attachment
Big bowl other than the mixer bowl
Spatula
Jelly roll pan for freezing dough balls
Silpat or other nonstick liner
Cookie sheet
Measuring cups and spoons

Instructions
Melt the coconut oil or other shortening until it is liquid but not hot to the touch (warm is fine)
Put oil, lemon rind, and eggs in mixer and turn on mixer to make an emulsion
Add sugar, vanilla and lemon juice and mix thoroughly
Mix flour, baking powder, xanthan gum, salt and baking soda in separate large bowl.
Add flour mixture to the wet ingredients. You may want to work in batches
The dough will pull away and become stiff and cookie like
Refrigerate dough until it becomes stiff cold and easy to work with
Roll into 1 inch balls
Put dough back into refrigerator each time it is difficult to work with.
Refrigerate until firm or freeze (I always freeze mine and then defrost them to bake. That way I can actually bake more than one kind of cookie for the holidays.

When ready to bake
Remove cookies from freezer and allow them to come back up to room temperature. If they are too cold the cookies become fragile and hard to work with.
Make lemon sugar by combining 2 tsp of rind with 6 tablespoons of granulated sugar. If you want more lemon sugar, do 3 tsp of rind and 9 tablespoons of sugar.
Put 12 dough balls on the cookie sheet evenly spaced
Grease bottom of glass preferably with coconut oil
Dip glass bottom into bowl of lemon sugar to coat the bottom of the glass
Press glass with lemon sugar onto cookies to flatten them
Bake @350 for 10 minutes
Cool slightly on cookie sheet
Remove from pan with a spatula and cool on a rack.
Put into an airtight container once completely cooled.