By BOBBY HUEN
Make Lemon Butter Cookies Extra Soft By Using A Different Sugar
When it comes to lemon butter cookies, replacing granulated sugar with powdered (a.k.a confectioners') sugar can magically enhance your cookies’ texture and, thus, your experience.
The finer grain of powdered sugar allows it to dissolve rapidly, resulting in a smoother, more uniform cookie dough that bakes to a dense, melt-in-your-mouth consistency.
While granulated sugar imparts a subtle grittiness to cookies, powdered sugar dissolves during baking and interferes with gluten formation, yielding silky-smooth, tender cookies.
To make a lemon butter cookie, grate the zest off the lemons and juice them. Then, cream the butter and sugar together with a stand mixer before adding the lemon juice and zest.
Add flour to the mix and combine lightly to prevent gluten formation. Finally, make small balls with the dough and arrange them on a cookie sheet before placing them into the oven.
Optionally, you can combine extra powdered sugar, lemon zest, and lemon juice to create a glaze. Brush the glaze all over the cookies and grate extra lemon zest over them.