The Best Lemon Cookies

I was lucky enough to have dinner at Giada in Las Vegas last week. Not lucky to be in Vegas, Vegas is not even remotely somewhere I desire to go. But as long as I had to be there I decided I would eat well.  And I did. Including a delicious dinner at Giada DeLaurentis' restaurant.

For dinner I had an amazing vegetable bolognese. For dessert, Giada's Favorite Cookies. I got two each of her three favorite cookies. There were chocolate chip, peanut butter with some sort of jam in them and lemon ricotta cookies. The first two were just OK, nothing special. But the lemon ricotta cookies were amazing. They were quite possibly the best cookie I have ever eaten. I knew I had to make them!

The night I got home I went to my closet full of cookbooks and pulled out my Giada books and started searching for the recipe. I found it in Giada's Kitchen.

Here's a link to an online version:
Lemon Ricotta Cookies

I was excited to see that the recipe made 44 cookies. I could share some and still have enough to get my fill!

They are a snap to make, cream butter and sugar, add eggs, ricotta cheese, lemon juice and lemon zest then add the dry ingredients. The batter is a light, fluffy, and lemony.

Giada says to line two baking sheets with parchment and to drop the batter by 2-tablespoonfuls onto the baking sheets. Her baking sheets must be significantly larger than mine because 22 cookies would never fit on one of my sheets. I also think that the recipe doesn't really mean 2-tablespoons of batter per cookie. For the first two trays I used a 2-tablespoon scoop. There was no way I was getting 44 cookies out of the batch. For the last tray I used a 1 1/2 tablespoon scoop. In total I got 36 cookies.

I didn't know how much the batter would spread so I was conservative and only put 8 cookies on the first tray.

I filled the second tray a bit more full, with 11 cookies.

The cookies are baked for 15 minutes then left to cool on the trays for another 20 minutes. They did spread a little but my 11 cookie-tray baked up just fine.

While the cookies are cooling a glaze of powdered sugar, lemon juice and lemon zest. 

The glaze is painted on the cookies and then, get this, you have to wait TWO HOURS before you can eat them!  What? No way was I waiting 2 hours. I ate one right away. Delicious. The cookie was light, airy and lemony without being too sweet. These are now my new favorite cookie.  Next time I'll put the glaze all the way to the edges like they did at the restaurant and I'll use the 1 1/2 tablespoon scoop instead of 2 tablespoons, otherwise I wouldn't change a thing!