When life gives you lemons, make cookies.

It snowed today. Stupid winter. I would be less disgruntled if the city of Neenah had started plowing earlier so that it didn't take me 40 minutes to get to the kitty shelter this morning. After the significantly shorter drive home, I decided that I wished to bake. Baking on a snowy day just seems like a correct thing to do.

I once again hauled out my trusty "America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book" (aka my Bible) and flipped to a recipe I've wanted to try for a while: glazed lemon cookies. They are cookies of the "icebox" variety, which I'd never tried before.

First I assembled the ingredients for the cookies:

3/4 c sugar
2 Tbsp lemon zest
1 3/4 c all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into 1 inch pieces and chilled
2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 large egg yolk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Everything is supposed to be done in the food processor, but the only one available for me to use was a little three-cup one, so I modified a bit.

Next, zest the lemons. Lemon, actually; it only takes one. For those of you following along at home, try not to zest your fingertips or knuckles along with the lemon.

Next, food process (what is the appropriate verb for this situation anyway?) the lemon zest with the sugar until it's yellow. Add the salt and baking powder and 1/4 cup flour and pulse until combined. Dump the contents of the FP container into a mixing bowl.

In batches, combine the rest of the flour and butter chunks in the FP. It'll look crumbly and sort of like cornmeal when you're done. Add to the mixing bowl.

Juice the lemon. Feel free to swear a bit when you realize that the juice thing you're using is a bit too large for the glass and there is lemon juice all over the counter and your hands and you have a paper cut dammit.

Separate your egg. Combine the yolk with the 2 Tbsp of lemon juice and mix a bit. If you like curdled egg, do this in advance; if you'd like something you can actually use, do this immediately before you need to use it. With the mixer running, add the lemon-yolk mixture. Keep mixing until the dough clumps together in a ball.

Form the dough into a 2-inch thick log and wrap in Saran wrap or your plastic wrap of choice. Refrigerate for about 2 hours. While you're waiting, you can shovel the four inches of snow off of your deck and front walk.

Preheat the oven to 325 and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper. Slice the cookie log into 3/8-inch rounds, or whatever thickness you think looks like 3/8 of an inch. Put them on the cookie sheets about an inch apart and bake for 15-16 minutes until the cookies are set and the edges start to brown, rotating and switching the pans mid-bake. Let them sit on the cookie sheets for three minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.

Next up, the glaze.

1 Tbsp cream cheese, softened
2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 c powdered sugar

Whisk the cream cheese and lemon juice together in a bowl until smooth. It should be noted that by "whisk" they mean "use a fork or the cream cheese will retreat into the center of the whisk and refuse to come out." Add the powdered sugar, 1/2 cup at a time (I found that the glaze was REALLY thick and REALLY sweet when I used all of the powdered sugar; next time I'm only using a cup).

Put a bit of glaze on the center of each cooled cookie and spread with the back of a spoon. But only if your glaze is spreadable; if not, use a knife to slob it on.

Viola! Lemon cookies!

In other news, I've narrowed it down to three schools: Wisconsin, Illinois, and Kansas State. The pro-con list is in progress. Thank you, sorority chapter meetings.