I never liked sugar cookies as a kid. I mean, they were still cookies, right? So I ate them of course, but they were not my favorite. I loved peanut butter, gingersnaps, and chocolate chip. So why am I sharing a sugar cookie recipe? Because these are the kind of cookies I WISH were around when I was a kid. These are my “adult sugar cookie” and now they are what I crave! They are large, with a sugary crunch, and soft in the middle.
I added lemon and greek yogurt to this recipe. Lemon delivers on flavor, no matter what you put it in. I have been keeping fresh lemons in my fridge since my early days of cooking out of the book that got me started, Great Food Fast by Martha Stewart.
I especially love my EF Cookbook now because Everyday Food, which was such a great little magazine, is now out of print. Ah the digital age, I love/hate you. But thankfully many of the recipes from Everyday Food are still online, in these books as well as few others that Martha made from the EF kitchen. I have stacks of magazines in my house. Probably because I have that fear that if I throw them away I’ll wish I didn’t. Like somehow in the future I’ll miss them, need to see their photos again, their typefaces. And desperately wish I hadn’t tossed them into the bin.
Let me share a little insight about the way my mind works: when I see a recipe in my head, one that I’ve read somewhere before and now and am trying to track down, I see a screenshot of the image and the way the type was designed, and something in the recesses of my memory reminds me of the way it made me feel when I first saw it. If you ask me anything about current events, I probably couldn’t tell you much at all. But ask me what issue featured that upside-down apple cake from Martha Steward, or the grilled ribs from Bon Appetit, and I could probably remember the month and the year and produce the hardcopy magazine for you. Crazy, right?
So that’s where this recipe comes from. A remembering of an image, a feeling of a feeling. I remembered that cookies taste good and that I should make them again! That’s why I share them with you here, plus a few modifications, of course! These were adapted from this Everyday Food recipe.
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups sugar, plus ΒΌ cup more for sprinkling
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- Zest of one lemon plus 2 tablespoons Fresh lemon juice
- 1/4 cup plain greek yogurt
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees, with one rack in upper third and another in lower third.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda and set aside.
- Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 to 4 minutes with an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.
- Add egg and vanilla and combine, then add in the lemon zest and the juice. Mix well.
- With the mixer on low, add half the flour mixture and mix for 5 seconds.
- Add in the Greek yogurt and mix for another 5 seconds.
- Add in the last portion of flour and mix until just smooth. The dough will be pretty thick, so you may need to finish mixing with a wooden spoon or spatula.
- Using two spoons or a medium ice cream scoop, drop mounds of dough, each equal to about 3 tablespoons, 3 to 4 inches apart, onto two parchment-lined baking sheets.
- Spoon 2 teaspoons of sugar over each cookie.
- Bake until edges of cookies are just starting to brown and tops are still a little pale, about 15-19 minutes, rotating sheets once halfway through.
- Transfer cookies to a rack to cool.