Lemon Ginger Fork Cookies
Hello and welcome to season 2 of Holy Hotdish! February 22 marked the first anniversary of this blog and I'm kind of proud of myself for sticking with it and posting somewhat regularly (OK, I missed February and December...). I have a few things planned coming up, and you'll be pleased or horrified to learn at least one requires a Jell-O mold. Anyway, to those that have been following along and commenting, I appreciate it and thank you!
Now, on to the latest recipe test: Lemon Ginger Fork Cookies. I recently purchased a bag of lemons at Costco to make a lemon cream tart, but the recipe only used about 5 of them. Then I made a batch of lemon bars to try and use them up, but I still had approximately 600 lemons left. I ended up using only zest and a little bit of juice in this recipe. I now have a rather large amount of fresh lemonade in my fridge.
This recipe comes from the Norway Lutheran Church cookbook and was submitted by Mrs. V Strand, who credits "Grandma Hannah" with the original.
Lemon and Ginger Fork Cookies
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup shortening
2 eggs
2 tsp. soda
2 tsp. cream of tartar
2 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. lemon extract
3 1/2 cups flour
Cream butter or Crisco and sugar. Stir in beaten eggs and flavoring. Sift soda, cream of tartar, ginger and flour together and add to creamed mixture. Mix together thoroughly (chill, optional). Form in balls and fork on cookie sheet. Bake in oven 10 to 12 minutes.
I love it when these old recipes leave out important bits of information like oven temperature. I guess it was just a given for most that 350° is the standard cookie temp.
As I said before, I had 4,000 lemons to use up, so for this recipe I decided to forgo the 1 teaspoon of lemon extract in favor of 2 teaspoons of lemon zest and a little splash of juice. I tasted the dough before baking and decided it needed a little salt as well. If you're using salted butter, there's no need to add salt. Also, if you're using salted butter, I can't be your friend.
I was really pleased with these when they came out of the oven. I highly recommend the lemon zest substitution if you happen to have lemons on hand. If not, go ahead and spend $4 on the lemon extract and watch it sit unused on your shelf for the rest of eternity. Up to you I guess!
Final rating: 4/5 gosh, I'm feeling snarky today. Seriously though, these are good cookies.