Please don’t look too closely at your calendar and please don’t judge me. Yes, it is before Thanksgiving and yes, our house is completely decorated for the holidays. We are ready to enjoy the season!
After looking at our calendars, travel schedules, recitals, church music programs, youth retreats, work deadlines, birthdays and many other celebrations we decided to take the only free weekend left and get to work on decorating so that our family might enjoy this holiday with a little less stress. It did seem a bit strange Friday evening when we were trimming the tree and grilling steaks, but I’m all about new traditions along with the old.
There was another motivation for all the hoopla. My culinary book club is due to knock on my door tonight. Guess what the theme is this month? A holiday cookie exchange. Each member is to bring 2 dozen of her favorite holiday cookie and we are going to exchange treats, recipes and holiday memories, all while enjoying a meal. Everyone voted to do the exchange early so that they could taste the cookies and prepare the recipes for holiday giving.
The recipe I have selected is Lemon Kisses. This is one of our favorites. I only bake these at Christmas so they truly are a holiday tradition at our house. I highly recommend that you turn on the Christmas music and let the baking begin. These cookies freeze well. I just wait to add the chocolate drizzle until right before serving. Enjoy!
Update: The cookie exchange was such fun! As you can see the cookies we tasted and traded were a great variety. Everyone came away with lots of new recipes to try.
Lemon Kisses
1 1/2 cups butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon lemon extract
Zest of 1 lemon
Juice from 1 lemon
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups finely chopped almonds*
68 milk chocolate candy kisses
Powdered sugar
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 tablespoons shortening
In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat butter until fluffy. Add sugar, lemon extract, lemon zest and lemon juice; blend well.
Add flour and almonds and continue beating at low speed until well blended. Cover and refrigerate dough for several hours or overnight.
Preheat oven to 375ºF. Shape approximately 1 tablespoon of dough around a chocolate kiss. Make sure to cover the kiss completely and seal well. Place on ungreased cookie sheets and bake 9 to 12 minutes or until set and bottom edges begin to brown slightly. Cool 2 minutes on cookie sheet and transfer to wire rack.
Sprinkle generously with powdered sugar. In a small saucepan, over low heat melt chocolate chips and shortening; stirring constantly until smooth. Drizzle over each cookie.
Makes about 68 cookies
*Finely chop the almonds in the food processor.
These cookies look so gorgeous…almost too pretty to eat. But, of course, in my household they’d be gone in a second! So glad to have found your site through Tidy Mom! Looking forward to reading more!
I originally found you through Dish & Dine and followed you through facebook as well (Kathie Roletter Meller) but I have to say your site is fantastic!
These cookies look so good I will definitely be bookmarking this one for this holiday season. I wonder if anyone would mind if we just skipped “dinner” and went right to coffee and cookies?