The insane baking continues. The amount of cookies that I’ve been churning out everyday is scary. Think my family and friends are going to get very tired of being my guinea pigs soon. So my new recipe for the day – Almond lemon zest pretzels. If you want to test someone’s taste palate, let them try this cookie. So far the response I’ve got was

1. Hmm.. this tastes familiar. Is it orange?
2. Fruitcake flavour! (weirdest comment ever)
3. Lime!

The flavours were not that far off except for fruitcake – think my sister’s taste palate is damaged.

This cookie is one of my favourite – it is crumbly and irresistible. However, to get the pretzel shape, you need to get a pretzel cookie cutter. It makes your life so much easier.

I always like to make my cookie dough a day ahead – this enhances the flavour of the cookies. It can be a little tricky making this cookie during a hot weather with the pretzel cutter because it gets sticky. I was so annoyed making this when I was in Singapore – the humidity just makes everything so messy but making it in Australia was a breeze haha. So the best way is to let the cookie dough soften a little after taking it out from the fridge then roll it out using a rolling pin between two pieces of baking paper. Once the dough has been rolled out, use the pretzel cutter and start cutting out the cookies.

Lemon zest almond pretzels

Preparation time: 15 min
Baking time: 10-15min

Nutrition per pretzel (one batch makes 40)

Ingredients

1. 140g plain flour
2. 100g wholemeal plain flour
3. 2 large egg yolks
4. 1 tsp baking powder
5. 140g unsalted butter
6. 100g caster sugar
7. Zest 2 lemons
8. 50g almond nibbles
9. 1 tsp vanilla essence

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees (convectional oven)
2. Zest 2 lemons
3. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy
4. Add in 2 large egg yolks and continue to cream
5. Add the lemon zest and vanilla essence into the mixture then mix it well
6. Sieve the flour and baking powder into the mixture and mix well until a dough is formed
7. Add in the almond nibbles into the dough
8. Place the dough into a cling wrap and refrigerate the dough for at least an hour or overnight (preferably)
9. Take the dough out from the fridge. Using a pretzel cutter, cut out the pretzels
10. Bake it in the oven for 10-15min or until the cookie turns golden brown