Lemon Cream Cheese Cookies

'Tis the season for baking cookies, from an old worn out cookbook of my grandmother's. I decided to dig out my grandma's cookbooks and search for the beloved cookie recipe she used to make year after year, Lemon Cream Cheese Cookies. My 18 year old daughter never experienced them as a child, and for that I was sad but prepared to introduce her to these delectable little lemon biscuits from my childhood.

Once I found the cookbook it was not hard to locate the recipe, obviously the most "turned-to" page in the book. I found myself touching the pages with splatters of vanilla, bits of batter, gritty flour and remembering my grandma baking away in our kitchen. How long ago were these traces of her baking left on these pages?

As I carefully looked for the publishing date I came across where my grandma wrote her name in the front of the book and I excitedly showed my daughter as my eyes began to well up with the memories. I quickly recovered myself, not wanting my daughter to see me getting misty (she gets all freaked-out when I get sentimental). We were here to bake some cookies and so we did...

These cookies can either be rolled and cut out with cookie cutters OR rolled into little balls. Once baked and cooled, I frost them with a simple lemon icing (recipe below) and sprinkle a bit of colored sugar on top. The texture of these cookies are very similar to shortbread but very moist from the cream cheese. The icing gives them a burst of tart lemon, my goodness they're heavenly!

My grandma loved to cook and the few cookbooks she owned were well used and very worn. I have even attempted to hold them together with tape but should really invest in having them rebound. Her two-volume "Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking" by Meta Givens was first published in 1947, mine is the 1955 edition. These cookbooks are quite the collectors item I discovered after a little on-line investigating. True cookbooks of the 40'sand 50's, so simple and straightforward.

Volume II features recipes for raccoon, squirrel, woodchuck and turtle, everything you need to know to kill, bleed, eviscerate, remove feathers and fur, clean and prepare for cooking, canning or preserving, it's some good reading, I tell ya!

Lemon Icing

2 c. powdered sugar

1 Tbsp. softened butter

1/2 tsp vanilla

fresh lemon juice

Combine all ingredients together with just enough lemon juice to make a very smooth icing to desired consistency. Sprinkle cookies with colored sugar before icing hardens.

Happy baking!