Lemon Crinkle Cookies

My sweet hubby needed cookies for a work party.  When he asked, very nicely mind you, I started thinking chocolate chip cookies…a certain favorite…but it wasn’t quite right.  With summer setting in I wanted something brighter and fresh.  I pondered lemon bars, but remembered that I’d seen this recipe for lemon crinkle cookies and was sure I had it pinned somewhere.

So I popped over to pintrest and wandered through my cookie pins until I found what I wanted.  I adjusted this recipe to use Ultra Gel, which I honestly use in close to all of my cookie recipes.  Living in Utah we fight both altitude and humidity when it comes to baking.  Food dries out easily and adding the Ultra Gel and a little extra liquid helps everything stay good longer.  Not that we ever have a hard time working our way through cookies!

These cookies turned out really good.  They have nice crispy edges with a smooth creamy center which makes me happy.  These are powder sugar dusted, very traditional for crinkle cookies, which makes for a bit of a sticky situation on fingertips.  It wasn’t a bad thing, but means you’ll want to separate layers of the cookies with waxed paper if you freeze very many of them.  All in all I’m really glad I made a double batch. 

Find the original recipe here.  Add two teaspoons of Ultra Gel with the dry ingredients.

You Can Do It Hollandaise Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce is one of the classic French sauces.  It’s creamy and buttery with a little kick of lemon and heat.  It’s also a feared sauce which most home chefs view as something they could never do in their own kitchens.  It conjures pictures of chef’s in white jackets frantically whisking egg yolks over a double boiler and cursing when the whole thing curdles or breaks.  It’s a sauce for fancy occasions in fancy places…

Unless you have Ultra Gel…and a blender.

I know.  It sounds like blasphemy, but trust me on this.  It works.  Adding Ultra Gel to the recipe helps to hold the sauce so that it won’t break before you can get it on the plate, and using a blender helps with the curdling and with keeping your wisking arm from falling off.  Yes, gentle reader, making a beautiful sauce is within your reach which leads to Eggs Benedict or beautiful sauced vegetables and a lot of oohs and ahhs from your adoring public.   So pull out the blender and let’s go.

Ultra Gel Hollandaise Sauce in a Blender

4 egg yolks

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon salt, kosher if you please

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional.  Can also use white pepper or lemon pepper)

2 Tablespoons Ultra Gel

12 ounces melted, unsalted butter

1-2 Tablespoons milk, as needed

Melt your butter in a small sauce pan, keeping it at heat without allowing it to smoke.  Combine egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, Ultra Gel and any other spices in a blender and blend until pale yellow.  This blending adds heat to the yolks and starts to cook them, denaturing the proteins.  Add the hot butter a little at a time to the blender mixture until all butter is incorporated.  Blend until mixture is thick and creamy.  If necessary add a little milk until the sauce is at your desired thickness.  Serve warm, eat much.

Jana