Christine’s Italian Lemon Bite Cookies
Christine’s Italian Lemon Bite Cookies are a Marino family favorite! Usually made around the holidays but so light and yummy they are really a year round cookie. They are perfect on a holiday cookie tray. They are also an appropriate and easy treat to serve during the spring/Easter and summer season. The soft little round cookie ball with their bright and tangy lemon icing is just such a treat anytime.
Our family makes all types of Italian cookies: vanilla “Mama Cookies”, iced chocolate cookies, fig cookies, and these lemon bite cookies. We call them “Christine’s” because my daughter Christine learned how to make them when she was in junior high. One of the first things she mastered in the kitchen (she’s a fabulous cook today). At the time, she took them on as her contribution to baking cookies around the holidays. Now, most of the homemade Italian cookies we make take some effort and are a little involved. Totally worth the effort, of course. But these little gems are easy to make and have such a bright, unique taste.
Our whole family loves them and when I say that my husband EJ loves them, that is saying ALOT. He isn’t the biggest lemon fan. As a matter of fact, there have been more than a few disagreements over dishes I have made being too “lemony”. But he LOVES these cookies. A few weeks ago I was cleaning out my freezer and found a bag of vanilla Mama Cookies, a bag of Italian chocolate cookies and a bag of these Lemon Bite Cookies that were leftover from the holidays. (I make tons of Italian cookies around Christmas time and they all freeze well, by the way.) So I thawed them all out and put them on individual platters. Every time I turned around he had a cookie in his hand….and it was a lemon one! Now THAT is a stamp of approval!
I’m planning on making Christine’s Italian Lemon Bite Cookies all through spring and summer this year. They are so good and so easy to make. Not going to save them for just the Christmas holiday season!
Christine’s Italian Lemon Bite Cookies
Ingredients
- 5 cups Swans Down cake flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 2 sticks butter at room temperature
- 1½ cups sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1 Tablespoon lemon extract Use good quality; I use Penzey's
Icing Ingredients
- 2 Tablespoons butter at room temperature
- 16 ounces confectioner's sugar sifted
- 6 Tablespoons evaporated milk **NOT sweetened condensed milk
- zest of one lemon
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon lemon extract
Instructions
For Cookie:
- Preheat oven to 350℉.Sift flour and baking powder together in a large bowl. Set aside.
- In bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream butter until creamy and smooth. Add sugar gradually and beat until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add lemon extract and combine well.
- Add the butter mixture into the flour mixture and stir well, starting with a rubber spatula. Then, using your hands with a teeny bit of flour on them, mix the dough well until ingredients are combined. At first dough will be sticky, but will smooth out as you work it. When combined well, let sit in bowl covered in wax paper for about 10 minutes to rest.
- Roll into balls about an inch in diameter and place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment. Bake for about 10-15 minutes, watching carefully as every oven cooks differently. Cookies should be light brown on the bottom, but not brown on the top. Do not overcook! Let cool completely before icing.
For Icing:
- In bowl of a stand mixer with the wire whisk attachment, cream the butter slightly. Since it is a small amount of butter, it will just kind of smear around the bowl. That's perfectly fine.Add the confectioner's sugar alternately with the evaporated milk. Beat well. Add the vanilla extract, the lemon extract, and the lemon zest. Beat until smooth and thickened somewhat.
- To ice the cookies, I take each cookie and "wipe" it with the icing, covering each cookie completely. You can easily thin the icing with more evaporated milk, if desired, and just dip each cookie. Set on a rack or parchment paper to dry completely.
- To store these cookies, store in a foil container such as a foil baking pan, in layers seperated with wax paper and covered loosely with foil. Do not store in any plastic such as ziploc bags or other types of plastic storage bowls as this will cause the icing to sweat. You can, however, freeze single layer on parchment and then store in the freezer in ziploc bags. When you thaw the cookies out, take out of the bag and place on a platter or plate covered loosely with foil or wax paper, or under a cake dome.