Maggiano's Lemon Cookies

Okay ladies and gents, I am just now getting to this but last Saturday I made some awesome cookies. If you've ever gone to Maggiano's for your birthday, or someone else's, you have probably received a plate of complementary lemon shortbread cookies, and I found a recipe for them, they were great! To see the original recipe (or at least the one I used) Click Here

But, I'm going to teach you how to make these wonderful things.

What You Need:

• 1 1/2 sticks of butter room temp. (the recipe says unsalted, I used regular old Country Crock)
• 3/4 cup of white sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 1/2 tsp. of vanilla extract
• a few pinches of salt (I used like 3 pinches, but my fingers are small, so you can guess)
• 2 cups of all purpose flour
• 1 cup of powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons of lemon juice

What To Do:

1. Beat together the butter and sugar until it is fluffy. 
2. Add the egg yolks, vanilla, and salt, mix all together.
3. Add flour slowly while beating. (the original says until just incorporated, but I mixed it till it was dough)
4. Divide dough and roll into two logs. (the size of the so called logs does not matter in my opinion)
5. Wrap the logs in wax paper, refrigerate until firm, about 30 minutes. (When you do this turn your oven onto 350 degrees Fahrenheit so it's already ready.)
6. Slice the logs into cookies (kind of like pre-made Pillsbury dough, I got 9 slices out of each log. I rolled the slices into balls and squished them a bit so they wouldn't be so round. I used a stone baking sheet, but a metal one works too)
7. Bake the cookies between 15-20 minutes or until they look light gold, or like shortbread color.
8. Let the cookies cool on a baking sheet. (This is when I started making the icing)
9. Combine the powdered sugar and lemon juice together making icing. (I ended up using a little bit more than a cup of sugar and a few extra squirts of lemon juice to get all the cookies covered,)
10. After the cookies have cooled spread the icing on the cookies (I just use a spoonful of it on each cookie, it's easist to just use a spoon to spread it any way.)
11. Let the icing harden, and enjoy!

And now, a pretty collage of the process: