Lemon Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg, room temperature
1 tsp. vanilla extract
¾ tsp. lemon extract
½ tsp. salt
1¾ cups all purpose flour

Instructions

With the paddle attachment on your mixer, cream butter and sugar together until just mixed.

Scrape down the sides of bowl with a rubber spatula then blend in the egg, vanilla and lemon until just mixed.

With mixer on low, blend in salt and flour, mixing for about a minute.

Roll dough into a flattened ball and put in refrigerator for an hour (may go as much as overnight).

If you left the dough in the refrigerator overnight, allow it to sit on the counter for half an hour before rolling.

Heat oven to 350° F.

Cover 2 cookie sheets with baking parchment and set aside.

On a well floured counter, roll half the dough to ¼" thickness and use cutters to make shapes. Place on cookie sheets with about ½" between them. If you want to add a sugar sprinkle, now is the time to do that.

Repeat with other half of dough.

Gather scraps, press together and roll out to make remaining cookies.

Bake 8 to 12 minutes being careful not to overbake. They are done when the bottom edges just start to turn brown.

Allow the cookies to cool enough to handle them before moving them to a wire rack. Allow them to cool completely before icing or decorating.

Footnotes

Don't overmix the dough or your cookies will come out tough.

You can glaze the cookies or use frosting but these have a nice, sweet, subtle lemon flavor without being overpowering.

The number of cookies you get will depend on how big you make them. This recipe makes about two dozen medium sized cookies. With my moon cookie cutter, I got 34.