Lemon Meltaway Cookies — A Quieter Corner of the December Kitchen

The kitchen is the room I live in. The other rooms are storage for memories — the dining room with its china cabinet, the living room with Paul's shipwreck books, the upstairs bedrooms where the kids grew up and which I have not entered (except to dust) in years. The kitchen is where the present happens. The kitchen is where the food is made and the dog is fed and the morning begins and the evening ends. The kitchen is the entire territory of my daily life now, and I find that this is enough. Karin and I talked Sunday. Stockholm in winter is dark. Duluth in winter is dark. We compared darknesses. We laughed. Karin said: "Linda, do you remember the time Pappa drove us to Two Harbors in a blizzard because Mamma wanted lutefisk?" I said yes. The story unspooled across the phone for twenty minutes. I had forgotten half of it. Karin remembered all of it. The memory was, briefly, complete between us. Mamma's hands shake more than they did last month. I do not point it out. I notice. I notice everything. The shake is small — barely visible when she is at rest, more visible when she lifts her coffee cup, most visible when she is trying to thread a needle. She still threads needles. She still bakes. She still calls me on Tuesdays at 10. The hands shake. The shaking does not stop the doing. The doing is what Mamma is. Julbord prep is in full force. The list is on the fridge. The pickled herring is ordered (three varieties — mustard, dill, onion — from Russ Kendall's, delivered next week). The meatballs are scheduled (Wednesday before Christmas Eve, sixteen pounds of beef and pork, the kind of cooking marathon that requires water breaks). The kitchen is at war with December and December is losing. The kitchen has been winning this war since 1990. The kitchen will win again. I cooked Pepparkakor and glögg this week. The December ritual. The cookies thin and crisp. The wine warm with cardamom and orange peel. The Damiano Center: a regular named Marlene, who has been coming for twelve years, told me her granddaughter just had a baby. She was glowing. She had a photo on her phone. The phone was old and cracked but the photo was clear: a small pink baby in a hospital blanket. Marlene said: "I am a great-grandmother now. The same as you." I said: "Welcome to the club." We hugged. The line continues, even on the hard side of the soup line. Mamma's bread pans are on the shelf where they have always been. I used the smaller one this week. The metal has worn smooth in the places her hands touched it for sixty years. The pan is, in some real sense, a sculpture of Mamma's hands. I knead the bread in the bowl Mamma used. I shape it on the counter Mamma stood at (well, mine, but identical to hers — same Formica color, same dimensions). I bake it in the pan Mamma baked in. The kitchen is the relay. The relay continues. It is enough. It has to be. And on a morning like this, with the lake doing what the lake does and the dog at my feet and the bread on the counter and the kitchen warm enough to live in, it is. It is enough.

The pepparkakor came out right this year — thin and crisp the way Mamma always made them, the kitchen smelling of cardamom and orange peel for the better part of a Tuesday. But there was butter left over and an afternoon still to fill, and the kitchen, as it does, suggested something. Lemon meltaway cookies are not Swedish. They are not December in any particular tradition. They are just small and pale and quiet, and they dissolve the moment you stop paying attention to them — which felt, this week, exactly right.

Lemon Meltaway Cookies

Prep Time: 20 min + 30 min chill | Cook Time: 14 min per batch | Total Time: ~1 hr 15 min | Servings: 36 cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/3 cup powdered sugar, plus 1/2 cup more for rolling
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon zest (from 1 large lemon)
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup cornstarch

Instructions

1. Cream the butter. In a large bowl, beat softened butter and 1/3 cup powdered sugar together until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
2. Add lemon and salt. Mix in the lemon zest, lemon juice, and salt until fully combined. The mixture may look slightly curdled — that’s fine.
3. Add dry ingredients. Whisk together the flour and cornstarch in a separate bowl, then add to the butter mixture. Stir until a soft dough forms. Do not overmix.
4. Chill the dough. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or up to overnight. The dough should be firm enough to roll into balls without sticking.
5. Preheat and shape. Heat your oven to 350°F (175°C) and line two baking sheets with parchment. Roll the chilled dough into 1-inch balls and place them 1 1/2 inches apart on the prepared sheets.
6. Bake. Bake for 12—14 minutes, until the bottoms are just barely golden and the tops remain pale. They will look underdone — that’s correct. Do not overbake.
7. Roll in powdered sugar. Let cookies cool on the pan for 5 minutes, then roll each one gently in the remaining 1/2 cup of powdered sugar while still warm. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely, then roll a second time for a thick, snowy coating.
8. Store. Keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to one week, or freeze (rolled once) for up to two months. Roll in fresh powdered sugar after thawing.

Nutrition (per cookie)

Calories: 78 | Protein: 1g | Fat: 5g | Carbs: 8g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 18mg