lemon and strawberry sour cream cookies

Apologies for the somewhat patchy service around here recently. With work and being a tad under the weather, I haven't really had much time to focus on anything blog-related. What's even worse is that I'm not at all interested in food at the moment. The only time I ventured into the kitchen at the weekend was to make myself a mug of hot orange squash (I am, undeniably, still a child in so many ways).

Hopefully this food-based malaise will pass by tomorrow night as we're supposed to be going out for a six course extravaganza at Launceston Place in Kensington.

Whilst I know logically that going out to a restaurant on Valentine's Day is a big con with expensive set menus and nauseating fellow dinners, we end up doing it every year. Having concrete plans ensures that we both leave work on time and have to talk to each other rather than spending the evening on our respective laptops.

We are not a particularly romantic couple in any way. The first time my boyfriend told me he loved me was in a text message. The second time was when it was raining and he wanted to share my umbrella.

Luckily, as I am also not of a romantic persuasion, the manner of both these pronouncements was okay with me

For me, romance is what you make of it. One person's romance is another person's nightmare. My idea of romance is to force feed my boyfriend heart shaped cookies until he feels sick. It's what true love is all about. 

These cookies are pretty special though - light, fluffy, slightly lemony  sour cream cookies filled with strawberry jam. I saw a picture floating around on pinterest and employed my finest linguistic skills (Google Translate) to decipher the recipe which was in Italian. I probably could have found a recipe in English somewhere on the internets but that seemed so much less fun.  

These are probably the least cookie like cookie that I've ever eaten but they are rather delicious. The only problem with them is that they don't last more than a day or two before they go floppy (never a good look) so you have to eat them pretty quickly. It's not really much of a hardship though.  

~

Lemon and strawberry sour cream cookies

Adapted from Biscotti by Ilona Chovancova via fragole e limone

Yield: Approx 25 cookies

Ingredients

• 250g plain/all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 100g caster sugar
• 80g unsalted butter, softened
• 250ml sour cream
• 1/2 teaspon vanilla extract
• 1 medium egg
• Zest of 1 lemon

Cooking Directions

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar and baking powder.
2. Add the butter, sour cream, egg, vanilla and lemon zest and bring all the ingredients together with your hands to form a sticky dough. Wrap the dough in cling film and leave in the fridge overnight.
3. Preheat the oven to 150C/300F and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper or a silicon mat.
4. Roll out the dough to a thinness of 2-3 mm (it will rise slightly in the oven) and cut out into your desired shapes. I used a small square cookie cutter and then used some tiny cookie cutters to cut out the heart shapes in half the squares but you can do it freehand. You can then add the scraps back into the mixture to re-roll.
5. Bake for 8-10 minutes until a pale golden brown. Carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool (they will be quite soft). When cooled, place a teaspoon of jam on one of the complete cookies, place one of the cut out cookies on top and gently press together.
6. Dust with icing sugar to serve.