These cookies are so bright, fresh and sunny. They are stuffed full of tart lemon curd, and slightly vegetal from a good amount of basil pulsed into the sugar. I know it’s September, but it’s the perfect time to get all the end of summer produce while you can - your garden or farmers market is possibly still full of amazing tomatoes, incredible, fragrant basil, beautiful raspberries. The combination of fresh basil (don’t be tempted to substitute dried basil here), and zingy lemon curd tastes exactly like summer.
I tried baking these two ways: first I just placed the cookies down on a parchment lined baking sheet, which produces thin, crispy-chewy cookies that spread a lot. Then I tried baking them in extra-large muffin cups, which makes perfectly uniformly sized, slightly thicker cookies that have very chewy centres. I found that baking them in cups also helps keep the lemon curd in a bit more of a concentrated burst in the centre of the cookie rather than sort of oozing out and slightly exploding. Both ways are great, but the muffin cup method is a fair bit more fiddly. I wound up cutting individual parchment liners for all the muffin cups and fully cooling them, or chilling them before removing them from the muffin cups. You can follow either method and make some very tasty cookies.
I also tried freezing the lemon curd into hard lumps in order to more easily wrap them in cookie dough. This is not worth doing (unless maybe your freezer gets a lot colder than mine does) as they never set firm so it wasn’t much easier. Just spoon lemon curd into the dough as best you can, and don’t worry too much if a tiny bit is still visible.
You can make your own lemon curd for these cookies, or you can use store bought curd, they will be delicious either way. I have adapted these from the brilliant Deeper Living’s basil and lemon sugar cookies, which are already totally delightful, but I thought they would be great with the addition of some tangy, bright, sweet-tart lemon curd.
basil and lemon curd stuffed cookies
mini batch lemon curd
2 large egg yolks
6 tbs granulated sugar
Juice and zest from 2 lemons
1 pinch salt
2 tbs butter
In a small saucepan, mix egg yolks and sugar well. Add lemon juice and zest and over medium-low heat, stirring constantly for about 4-5 minutes. Add butter a little at a time and continue to stir constantly until the curd thickens, which will take another 5-8 minutes.
Strain the curd through a fine mesh sieve, using a spatula to get as much curd as possible through the sieve. Refrigerate until set and very thick.
cookies
adapted from The Deeper Living
2 cups of white sugar
1 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves
2 ½ cups of all purpose flour (364 grams)
¾ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
zest from one lemon
1 egg
1 egg yolk
⅓ cup lemon curd
In a food processor, blend together basil and sugar until the basil is very finely pulverized and the sugar is a pale, bright green. Set aside ¼ cup of the sugar for rolling cookies in.
Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl, mixing well.
In a stand mixer (or with hand mixers in a large bowl) beat butter for 2 minutes or until very fluffy. Add 1 ¾ cups basil sugar and beat on high for about 3 more minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl to ensure everything is evenly incorporated.
Add egg, egg yolk and vanilla and beat until evenly incorporated. On the lowest speed, add flour mixture to the mixer bowl in three additions. Drape a very large tea towel over the mixer to prevent flour clouds if you like. Beat until just evenly combined with no flour streaks or unmixed spots. Scrape the sides to ensure everything is evenly mixed.
Using a medium cookie scoop (about 1 ½ tbs), make cookie dough balls. Using your hands, flatten the balls into discs and form them into little cup shapes. Spoon a generous teaspoon of curd into each cup. Fold the edges in to seal up the ball with lemon curd inside as best you can. Toss in basil sugar and bake, either in muffin tins or on a baking sheet:
If baking in rings or muffin tins: Line extra-large muffin tins with parchment, just covering the bottom. Bake for 15-17 minutes, or until the tops look just set and you may see some slightly golden colour around the edges. Let cool completely in the tins. Run a very sharp paring knife around the edge to release the cookies from the pan.
If baking on a cookie sheet: bake 10-12 minutes, or until the tops look just set and you may see some slightly golden colour around the edges.
Optionally, bang the baking pan down on the counter to slightly collapse and wrinkle the tops of the cookies.