Saturday, December 1, 2007

Lemon Pixies

The annual baking of Christmas cookies continues on. Not quite as usual. For the first time I am baking the Christmas cookies in our cozy little house. The house is very very old, has a creepy basement and an oven that doesn't like to stay closed. Other than that, things usually run along mighty smoothly.

Today's funkiness of the oven yielded spectacular results on a cookie that almost didn't make the list this year. These Lemon Pixies last year were just okay and the only reason I picked the recipe in the first place was because a friend of mine didn't like chocolate. She was a friend at the time, later she betrayed me and my life spiraled into something out of a Danielle Steele novel. She's no longer part of my life. I'm all right now, and I digress.

So, I made them today and decided that I needed to double the recipe because I ship the cookies out to my friends and last year I didn't have enough of these to go around. Wheeee! These were tasty! I'm not sure if it's my new drying racks, my new microplane, my temperamental oven, or what, but they turned out really really good. They are now hidden form the Brain, Mr. "I don't like lemon", who wanted more than his already agreed on 4 cookies.

Lemon Coconut Pixies
adapted from Hershey's

1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cup sugar
4 eggs
zest of 2 lemons
3 cups all purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups sweetened coconut flakes

Beat butter, sugar, eggs, and lemon peel in large bowl until well blended. Stir together flour, baking powder and salt; gradually add to butter mixture, beating until blended. Stir in coconut. Cover; refrigerate dough about 1 hour or until firm enough to handle. Shape into 1-inch balls; roll in powdered sugar. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 15 to 18 minutes in 300° oven until edges are set. Immediately remove from cookie sheet to wire rack*. Cool completely.

* These seriously need to go immediately onto the wire rack. I accidentally let some sit for maybe a minute and they were sticking to my silpat.

3 comments:

Deborah said...

I'm a huge citrus fan, so I'm sure I would love these. They sound and look delicious!

Mrs. White said...

I don't really like chocolate (blasphemy, I know) but looove creamy citrus things, so I might just be trying these out. They look amazing!

Mary said...

Fresh out of the oven (once they've cooled down enough to eat, but still warm) they almost taste like the cookie version of lemon bars. I may have to find a place to hide them from myself!