Super Bowl Quickie

Here I am, just in time to rescue you from the nightmare of “what to bring to the big Super Bowl party” dilemma!  No more frantic decisions between the nachos and the wings, the Natural Light or Coors Light, or even how to cart that big pot of chili on the subway and up five flights of stairs?  No, no my friends, the respectable answer is none other than Lemon Cornmeal Cookies.  I’m saying that with the straightest face I can muster.

I’m sure you won’t find it terribly shocking that I don’t “celebrate” the whole Super Bowl thing.  Yes, I like the commercials, but unless New York is playing, I doubt my remote will switch in the general direction of the game…and maybe yours doesn’t either but you have a good friend throwing a party just the same.  The way to class it up is with these fresh, lemony cookies.

After yesterdays busy, busy day of chocolate I wasn’t sure I would have the energy to make anything today, but the sun was shining brightly and I had a quick and easy recipe I wanted to try.  This won’t come as a shock to most people, but I get recipes emailed to me everyday…primarily from Martha Stewart related sites.  I always save the one’s I like in my inbox until I get a chance to try them out.  Now, I don’t always make everything I like (otherwise I would have no life), but periodically a very easy recipe comes along which seems a crime not to try.  This is the nature of today’s recipe. 

This cornmeal drop cookie is as easy as the recipe suggests and it took me no more than 25 minutes to heat the oven, mix the dough and get those babies going in the oven (I admit to cheating with getting the butter to room temperature.  I microwaved it for about 30 seconds…the French would not approve).  As has become my recent habit, I tampered slightly with the recipe.  In this case I added a couple of ingredients rather than making large adjustments.  Make the recipe as indicated, but when you are mixing the dry ingredients:  add the zest of one lemon.  When mixing the wet ingredients:  add a tablespoon of lemon juice.  And after you scoop the dough onto the baking sheet:  top with some colored sanding sugar…in this case I used a nice, sparkly yellow.  Additionally, using different citrus fruits in the same way would yield excellent results.

You still have time to get these in and out of the oven before the big game starts.  They taste like a lemon bar in cookie form, and what could be bad about that.  Show up on your friend’s or neighbor’s doorstep with a plate of these and you will be the belle of the ball…or the quarterback hero…or some other fitting term which denotes a glorious person in high standing.  These cookies are really fast and really delicious and beat the heck out of hot wings in my opinion.

I realized that though I spent yesterday enrobing items in chocolate, it’s still no substitute for making something from scratch with my own hands.  It’s just who I am.