Lemon and Cinnamon Christmas Cookies

It's Christmas time, the best time for baking cookies. At home in Alsace we would bake several kinds of cookies, enough to fill up a few boxes. They were supposed to be for guests first and therefore hidden by my mum in some remote corner of the house, but somehow we always managed to find them and gobble them up, until the day she would find empty boxes and get reeeeally mad.

This recipe was taken from the book "Les petits gâteaux d'Alsace: S'bredlebuech".
It originally did not include peanuts. I had planned to add almonds but I came home from the supermarket with the wrong pack, as it often happens. I then decided to add those peanuts anyways, and it worked well, no regrets. I also added nutmeg and five spice that were not on the original recipe.



For about 40 cookies

- 330gr flour
- 150gr sugar
- 165gr butter, softened
- 2 eggs
- about 30gr finely crushed roasted peanuts
- zest of 1 lemon
- 1 heaped tablespoon cinnamon
- a pinch of nutmeg
- a pinch of five spice (optional)
- a tiny pinch of baking powder

For icing
- icing sugar and lemon juice


Put the flour into a large bowl. Make a well and add all other ingredients except peanuts. With one hand, bring everything together, incorporating the flour little by little. When it is getting homogeneous add the peanuts, and mix until you have a smooth dough. Leave it in the fridge for one night to firm up.
The next day, spread the dough on a floured surface to a thickness of about half a centimeter. Cut out cookies of the desired shape with a cookie-cutter.
Put the cookies on an oven tray with cooking paper, and bake at 180 degrees for 15 minutes.
You can proceed with the icing when the cookies are cold. Mix icing sugar and a few drops of lemon juice and spread it on the cookies with a kitchen brush.
I know you'll want to have one immediately, but they taste better after one day, and they can be kept in a closed container for at least two or three weeks, although they usually disappear before.