Lemon Almond Stars

The recipe for day 10 of the Christmas Cookie Countdown came about because I had too many lemons lying around. So I made lemon curd.

I have THE BEST recipe for lemon curd. It is so good I had to use caps lock. I paired it with almond sugar cookies, which I cut into bite-sized stars. Originally I had planned to top them with almond icing, but I liked them so much like this I left them plain, then spent half an hour stacking and re-stacking them into a miniature almond lemon cookie Christmas tree.

I’m giving you the lemon curd recipe, which uses an untraditional but far superior method from any other I’ve ever seen. It’s from the May 1998 issue of Fine Cooking magazine. Below that is my recipe for almond cut-out cookies. These are sandwich cookies. I leave it to you to figure out how to put the two elements together. I’m sure you can.

Lemon Curd

• 6 T. butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large egg yolks
• 2 large eggs
• 2/3 cup lemon juice (I prefer a blend of regular and meyer lemons if you can find them)

1. Beat the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy, as though you were making a cake.
2. Beat in the eggs and egg yolks.
3. Beat in the lemon juice. The mixture will look curdled, but this is OK.
4. Cook the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly, until it looks smooth.
5. Increase the heat to medium and continue to cook and stir until it thickens noteceably. Do NOT let it boil. If you start to see steam rising form it, turn the heat off immediately.
6. Set aside to cool.

Almond Cut-Outs

• 1 cup butter
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 1/2 cup ground blanched almonds
• 3 cups flour

1. Cream the butter with the sugar.
2. Beat in the salt, baking powder, and extract.
3. Beat in the eggs.
4. Stir in the flour and almonds until just blended.
5. Divide dough in half, wrap each in plastic and chill for at east 1 hour.
6. Preheat oven to 350.
7. Roll dough out on a floured surface, cut out cookies.
8. Bake cookies on a parchment lined pan until the edges brown, about 7-12 minutes depending on their size.

 

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