Emily's Lovely Lemon Drops

After a week of dipping fresh Strawberries in homemade chocolate dipping sauce, we were ready for something totally different. Still healthy of course, just different. Cookies. Buttery, sugary cookies.

We also thought it was time to break out the new fruit extracts. When you first go low carb you discover that you can dress up anything with a good extract. Not artificial flavors and not sugary syrups. Just a little extract can change up a recipe in a heartbeat.

Which is what you'll have many more of if you eat right. Lose the grain, lose the sugar... and ultimately gain your health back.

The great thing about these cookies? You can change up the flavor of the cookie, and change up the flavor of the icing. Ultimately there's no end to the combinations you can make.  And they are the perfect recipe for a summer day, since they don't take long to bake. Plus, in the summertime when your children are home? You can get them to do the baking. Now mine are grown, but I bet you can hand this off to your tween or teen for a great rainy day project. I know my daughter and I had to spend quite a few minutes on flavor selection alone. Quality time to be sure.

Ultimately, my eldest chose lemon for the cookies, and peach for the icing. She also did all the mixing, stirring and baking. My favorite kind of recipe! Total yum. And while this was supposed to be a sugar cookie, the cookies themselves turned out more like buttery shortbread, with a touch of added sweetness in the icing. Definitely a refreshing change-up from the everyday desserts we low-carbers suffer through. Yeah. Sarcasm for those new to this game. Low carb today means truly enjoying some of the best baked goods ever. So enjoy.

Emily's Lovely Lemon Drops

1 1/4 cups Almond Flour 

3/4 cup Swerve Granular

1/4 cup softened unsalted butter

1 large egg at room temperature

1 teaspoon Lemon Extract

Preheat oven to 350F and line a cookie tray with parchment paper.  In a medium bowl, mix the flour and Swerve until well blended. Add butter and mix until creamed. Add the egg and extract, and blend well until a nice dough consistency is formed. Form small balls, maybe an inch, and place on tray. With the back of a fork, press each ball down to form a round disc. Dough can be sticky, so you might need to press lightly on the cookie with your fingertip while lifting the fork up.

Bake 8 minutes, and remove from oven. Let cool for a minute or two, then transfer cookies to a rack to finish cooling. While cookies cool, make the icing.

Icing:

1/4 cup confectioners swerve

2 or 3 tablespoons heavy cream

1/2 teaspoon Peach extract

Place swerve in a bowl and add cream one tablespoon at a time, until the a smooth cream consistency suitable for icing the cookies is achieved. Add extract and mix well. If the icing is too thick, add a little more cream. Too thin, add a little more Swerve.

Drop a dollop of icing on each cookie and spread lightly around. Wait a minute. Enjoy one or two. Refrigerate the rest for later.