Glazed Lemon Wafers

Yesterday, I was in the mood to bake. I wanted to make some lemon cookies. I was craving the lemon shortbread cookies with lemon glaze that my sister and I had at Gitano's in Corner Brook. They are to die for. As I searched the internet for lemon shortbread recipes, my mother (on the phone) said, "Is there one in the Cream of the West Cook Book?" Good question! I went to the cupboard and pulled down the book. There was indeed a shortbread recipe in the book and I imagined I could just add lemon zest and be done with it. But then I noticed on the same page a recipe for lemon wafers. Naturally, given my commitment to testing every recipe in the book, I opted to experiment with this new recipe.

The recipe was similar to a shortbread or sugar cookie recipe, with the addition of lemon juice and zest. In no time I had the dough ready. Since it was soft, I decided to wrap two discs of it in saran and chill it for a half hour before proceeding.

I rolled and cut the dough into small circles with scalloped edges. I assumed based on the recipe that they would hold their shapes. But I was wrong.

The end result (even when the cookies were chilled again before baking) were strangely flat and lace-like cookies. In fact, they looked like tuiles. I varied my baking technique (parchment, no parchment, cooler oven, hotter oven, chilled dough, etc) but in the end came out with the same lacy thin cookies.

Then I prepared a glaze for them. The recipe book included a strange vanilla glaze that probably would work in other instances, but I decided a lemon glaze would be better. So I whisked together some powdered sugar and lemon juice, spooned it over the top of each wafer, spread it so that each wafer was covered, and waited. When it hardened, I had my lemon cookies.




The glaze had settled into the holes and evened out the surface so that I had what looked more like a normal cookie to me. I give you the finished product:

And the verdict?

They tasted delicious. Buttery. Lemony. Sweet. Refreshing and rich. They were flaky and wafer thin. But even with the glaze over the top, they didn't look like much to write home to mom about. They also were nothing like the cookies from Gitano's (not that it matters). As my friend and I ate them after a feast of lobster and crab, my friend agreed with my assessment. They were the strangest cookies we'd ever seen, but they tasted great.

I must say, I wondered if there was something wrong with this recipe or if it had turned out as it should have. I took to Google. It turned out that there are other recipes for lemon wafers out there that produce similar results -- they seem to have been popular in the 70s. Alternatively, it could be that the measurements are off (more flour needed? less sugar?) and that's what happened. I'll never know -- and I'll probably never make them again -- but we did enjoy them.

Rating for flavour: 9/10
Rating for recipe/end result: 6/10

I will say that I just made a lemon curd sandwich with two of them and the whole thing was heavenly. YUM!

What's your favourite lemony dessert?