Lemon Sugar Snaps

These are Lemon Sugar Snaps from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. These cookies are straight up amazing. My husband's extended family lives in Kentucky, and each time we trek down there I make these cookies because they travel so well and yet taste awesome. They take a little bit of work, they need to be refrigerated, which takes time. They also need to be rolled into balls by hand and additionally rolled in sugar. You know Martha recipes, nothing is ever just easy but the results are well worth it. These cookies taste like buttery sugar cookies with a definite lemon flavor. The citrus reduces the overwhelming sweetness of the sugar cookie, making it so that you can eat about twenty of them in one sitting. It's crazy. Here you can find almost the exact same recipe, it makes a few more cookies and you use some shortening instead of all butter, but I suspect you will get a similar result.

Reckless with Anticipation

There is something amazing about Spring. It is full of what could be. Northern Illinois usually has fairly substantial winters; complete with lots of snow, ice, and below zero days. Somewhere around March, Mother Nature starts toying with us and she tosses us a few 60-70 degree days. Enough to make our hearts beat faster, hoping that winter is behind us and leaves us salivating for spring. But sure enough, it gets nasty and cold and rainy again for a few more weeks. Maybe she even throws in a snowstorm or two.

But by now, here in the middle of May, we are well into Spring. My tiny container garden plants are sprouting, leaving me to anticipate the delicious homegrown produce that is to come. Baby animals are born, like my little chick above. She leaves me reckless with anticipation because I know in a few short months she will have shed her fuzzies and will be laying beautiful brown eggs for me. And I know its been said a thousand times, but there is nothing like a fresh egg for baking.

So enjoy this season of anticipation, enjoy considering the endless possibilities from your farm fresh eggs or your bell peppers, or whatever it is that you are anticipating great things from this spring.