THE CREDIT
THE SELECTION
Remember the strawberry lemon muffins I made? I made a second batch using blueberries. From that moment onward, I knew blueberry month had to be next. (Is it cheating if a lot of the blueberry recipes I found also use lemon? You know what, it doesn’t matter. I make the rules here.)
To start our month… a cookie recipe! Yay!
THE RECIPE – LEMON BLUEBERRY CHEESECAKE COOKIES
INGREDIENTS
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 lemon, zested and juiced (original recipe calls for 3 Tablespoons of juice but I just used the whole thing – it’s pretty darn close)
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 cups flour
- 1 cup blueberries
- 4 ounces (1/2 package) cream cheese, cut into small cubes (I used Neufchatel because it’s slightly better for you)
INSTRUCTIONS
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees (Fahrenheit)… with a caveat. If you want to make these according to the original recipe directions, you’ll need to allow some time for your dough to chill. In which case… hold off.
First, prep thy lemon! Zest that sucker until it’s completely naked, then squeeze all the juice out of it that you can. Let that lemon die knowing it has fulfilled its true potential. Set the zest and juice aside for now.
In hindsight, I may have just juiced the lemon directly into the batter when the time came. That works too.
In a bowl of medium to large size, cream together your butter and sugar.
Mix in the lemon zest, lemon juice, and your eggs.
In a separate bowl stir together the baking soda, baking powder, salt, and flour. Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and mix until combined.
Stir in the blueberries (carefully, so they don’t burst!).
The next step is to chill the dough to get it to a roll-able state. The original recipe says to refrigerate for 15-20 minutes, so I scampered off to torture myself with Jillian Michaels (curious about the 30 Day Shred? Read Twenties Hacker fitness writer Calee’s review here. My personal opinion? I actually really like it, though I’d be lying if there hasn’t been a time or two I wanted to cry in the middle.) and then I took a shower, because, ew. So I gave them probably closer to 45 minutes to an hour. Honestly? I still don’t think that was long enough. Given the difficulty I had with the next step, I think I probably should have let it go overnight.
The next part is what makes them go from “lemon blueberry cookies” to “lemon blueberry cheesecake cookies.”
(Hint: this is also where you’ll want to start pre-heating your oven, if you decided to hold off at the beginning.)
The original recipe states to do as follows: roll your dough into balls, flatten into a flattish disc shape, smoosh a cube of cream cheese in the middle, then close it up back into a ball again. I had difficulty doing this, and the only reason I can think of is that my dough didn’t chill for long enough.
My method went as such: roll the balls, put them all on the sheet, poke them with my finger, smoosh a cube of cream cheese in the middle, then try to close it up again.
I also made the entire second pan without any cream cheese, just for a taste comparison. And also because I was lazy. And because it was really, really hot in my kitchen and I didn’t want to be in there any more.
Either way, bake for 10-14 minutes until ever-so-slightly browned on the bottom.
THE VERDICT
Theirs:
[via]
Mine:
In addition to being kind of a pain to finagle, I didn’t really care for the cream cheese in the center. Instead of melting into the cookie and intermingling with the other ingredients, it was… basically a biteful of cream cheese. Which I was not terribly keen on. I wanted something sweeter.
Without the cream cheese, the cookies were… not bad. I liked them well enough, but was informed that they basically tasted like muffins that were shaped like cookies. (Cue Elaine and her muffin tops. No, not the kind you’ll get after eating all these. Literal tops of muffins.)
Then, a moment of brilliance! The BF was rummaging around in the kitchen and asked if I had any frosting that he could put on them. I told him the leftover glaze from the strawberry-lemon muffins was in the freezer and he could try that. Guess what, guys? It’s TOTALLY AWESOME. I really, really think that these cookies should be made with the glaze. The glaze did absolutely nothing for me when it came to the muffins, but it’s a perfect “frosting” for these cookies.
[Refresher on the glaze: 1 cup powdered sugar + the juice of another lemon. Add the lemon juice to the powdered sugar until you've reached a desired consistency.]
[Can regular people actually make this? Is it easy?] They were easy… though I struggled with getting the cream cheese in the center. Which I then deemed to be not worth it for the next pan.
[Did it require any weird gadgetry or cookware?] Lemon zester (a cheese grater will work) and a juicer of some form.
[How much did the ingredients cost?] I’ll be honest. I don’t remember. I think I had everything except a lemon and blueberries (which will vary so much by region that it doesn’t make sense to tell you) and a fresh block of cream cheese which was probably around a dollar and change.
[Does it taste as good as it looks? Does it only look good because it was so well photographed?] Visually, I was quite pleased. They were very fluffy and the goo from the blueberries made me want to snarfle them all up because: ALL THE BLUEBERRIES! I was not displeased with the taste, but I loved them even more with the epiphany about the glaze.
[Weight Watchers Points+] It really depends on the size of your cookies and how many you manage to squeeze out of the batch. With no glaze and no cream cheese, if you yield 24 cookies, they will be 4 points+ each. If you get 25 to 35 cookies, they will be 3 points+ each. If you get 36 cookies, they’ll be 2 points+ each. I’d add a point for the addition of glaze and/or cream cheese.
[Final recommendation] With no hard feelings to the original recipe, I think if I make these again, it will be sans cream cheese and with a fresh batch of lemon glaze. Yum!
