Rosemary Lemon Cookies

 
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Salty, crumbly, buttery dough meets lemon zest and loads of fresh rosemary. Inspired by the base of Alison Roman’s delicious and shockingly controversial Salted Butter & Chocolate Chunk Shortbread cookies, and a beloved co-workers demand request for a savory/sweet cookie. What he got was this herbaceous little number.

  • 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (2¼ sticks) salted butter - cold, cubed

  • ½ cup (104 g) granulated sugar

  • ¼ cup (50 g) light brown sugar - packed

  • 2¼ cups all-purpose flour

  • 1.5 tbsp (~21 g) rosemary finely chopped

  • Zest of 1 lemon

  • Flaky Salt

Because I know myself (and I assume you’re similar) and I know that I always forget to read through the recipe to understand the time necessary — you will need to refrigerate this dough for 2 hours minimum before baking! I prefer leaving it in the fridge overnight and baking them off in the morning - but if you need cookies asap, 2 hours is enough.

In a medium bowl beat butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar on medium-high speed for about 5 minutes, until pale and fluffy. Standing mixers make quick work of this step, hand mixers can be hard and may take longer than 5 minutes — doing this completely by hand is not for the faint of heart.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl, reduce speed to low, and slowly add flour, lemon zest, and finely chopped rosemary, bit by bit until it’s just incorporated.

Split the dough into two halves and roll it into two equal logs in bee’s wrap, a ziplock bag, or plastic wrap. I regularly use bee’s wrap for slice-and-bake recipes and it’s super effective and reusable! Highly recommend (not sponsored, but bee’s wrap, hit me up!).

Chill for a minimum of 2 hours, or until firm. I warned you!

Preheat oven to 350° and line a a rimmed sheet pan with parchment paper.

Remove the delicious log of dough from the fridge. Slice about 1/4" off each end so that you’re working with nice flat ends and nibble on the dough scraps because duh. Then, slice rounds (about 1/2 an inch wide) and place them on your prepared sheet pan. Sprinkle with flaky sea salt - I like Jacobsen.

Bake cookies until you see a pale golden brown color creep around the edges - about 12-14 minutes. These cookies can be tricky - they will still be soft when you take them out of the oven, but don’t worry! They’ll firm up as they cool, and you can devour them shortly after.