Soaked Lemon Polish Sugar Cookies

What's Cookin'?

I took the recipe from Catholic Cuisine here and adjusted it.  Below is the original and what I did:

Original:

Ingredients:
1 C butter, softened
1-1/2 C sugar, plus extra for rolling
3 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract (or vanilla)
2 C flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 350F.  Cream sugar and butter.  Add egg yolks and vanilla (or lemon extract).  Mix until well combined - dough will be stiff.  Pinch off dough and roll into 1-inch balls.  Roll in granulated sugar.  Place on ungreased cookie sheets.  Bake until set, not brown, for 10-12 minutes.

What I did: 

Ingredient changes:  I used rapadura for the sugar and put a bit less than 1 cup; used farm fresh eggs; used white whole wheat flour; used aluminum-free baking soda.

Other changes:

The night before I melted the butter and let it cool.  Then I mixed the flour with the butter and sugar - and added 3 tablespoons whey.

The next day I worked in the rest.  I used the lemon extract version.  Then I added enough white flour to make the dough stiff.  I continued with the rest of the recipe.  I chose not to roll it in the sugar.  I may have added too much flour to stiffen the dough because mine didn't get as 'flat' as the ones in the original recipe's photo but they cooked fine.  I also held back about 1/3 of the batter and froze it.  That will make it easy to have fresh baked cookies when we need them.

This recipe adjustment is part of Kelly's Real Food Wednesday

http://kellythekitchenkop.com/2011/03/real-food-wednesday-31611.html

What Else Is Cookin'?

Here are the ferments I have on the counter right now:  Fermented Lemonade; Beet Kvass; Kefir

What's Gardenin'?

Here are some photos of the garden right now.  The big lettuce plants I put in several weeks ago but the smaller lettuce plants, etc overwintered and are now doing well.  The carrots in the middle bed overwintered as well.  The potato bed has just one little sprout so far.  Apparently I can grow kale without trying - unfortunately I don't really like kale, lol.  Mainly I add it to soups although I did make kale chips once.  The skinny bed on the far left has onion and garlic that grew through the winter.  The container garden is my herb garden with several kinds of mint (ginger, chocolate, spearmint, peppermint, and something else), thyme, oregano, rosemary, and lavender.  I think I'll put a basil plant in there that I thought would be a nice indoor plant (but it's dying!) - or I'll stick it in the flower bed where it grew so well last year.  The photo at the top of the blog shows our peach tree in bloom.  I hope we get them before the fire ants this year!

Herbs that overwintered well:  Sage, oregano, and parsley.

Good signs:  I saw a gazillion bees on our front bushes yesterday and today.  I saw hardly any bees the whole season last year so I'm really glad to see them back.