If you're searching for a thought to start this week, here's mine: any food containing the word "Cake." In fact you might say that this is my April mantra: panCAKE..... cupCAKE .....layerCAKE...
We at Luce's Gluten-Free Artisan Bread have pioneered great new savory flour mixes, but I personally have an unapologetic sweet tooth. Which, like some (all?) of you, is pretty itchy right about now. After all, it's been four months since we've had any sweet flour blend on the website store.
I have the scratch for that itch. Two scratches, in fact: Perfection All-Purpose Flour mix and Mile High Pancake mix. Both are our seasonal specials at the Luce's Gluten-Free Artisan Bread online store.
True panCAKE lovers know there's no better way to break a season of shortage - or to start any day, really - than with Mile High Pancakes. They're super easy to make, especially tasty when blended with buttermilk, and as puffy as that down coat you've (hopefully) mothballed 'til next year.
Right now is a great time to try some. 2018's maple syrup harvest is rolling out of Vermont, and mornings in most of the US are cool enough to merit a hot breakfast.
If you're like my wife Leslie and I, you'll make some for dinner. With poached eggs and bacon. Or smoked salmon. Or sausage. Or ..... you get the idea.
I particularly love panCAKEs loaded with blueberries and slathered with maple syrup. Leslie prefers them with a simple dab of butter. What we - and many of you - agree is there's no better pancake mix than Mile High.
And let's not forget, while traveling the CAKE highway, about dessert. I rarely make two sweet treats in a single day - so no cupCAKEs for dinner after a stack of panCAKEs - but it's comforting to realize that with Perfection All-Purpose flour in the pantry, that option is open.
Perfection is Luce's one-for-one wheat flour replacement. It makes some pretty awesome cakes. However, when I tested the batch we made last week, the treat I chose to bake was simpler: cookies.
Nothing proves the integrity of flour like a cookie, especially a simple sugar cookie. Sugar cookies' pared-down ingredient list makes a product that tells you instantly if anything is amiss. Thus cookies are the perfect test-bake.
Not only am I pleased to report that April's Perfection batch passed the cookie test with flying colors (sorry, cupCAKEs!), but I decided to share the recipe. You'll find it just below. It's a lemon-y riff on the classic, which I think will delight and enliven your taste buds. Just as much as cupCAKEs.
One really cool part about this cookie recipe is the way you can stretch out the dough. The batch yield is high - more than most families will want to bake (or eat) at one sitting - but the dough freezes brilliantly, and refrigerates well too. You can divvy it up and stash it in freezer zip lock bags, then thaw, roll out, and quickly bake zesty lemon cookies whenever the need strikes.
One word of warning: As I discovered when photographing, these lemon-sugar cookies are VERY tempting! I decided to teeth-mark "just a few" for the photos, and ended up with a big stack of bitten cookies and almost no whole ones left for dessert!
 PS: Cupcake recipes are coming. If you can't wait, just look up your favorite wheat-flour recipe and plug in Perfection All-Purpose Flour mix instead.
Lemon-Sugar Cookies
Ingredients:
2 cups Luce's Gluten-Free Artisan Bread Perfection All-Purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch salt
zest from one lemon
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened to cool room temperature (about 55 F)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon extract
1 large egg
Procedure:
1) Place flour, salt, and baking powder in a large bowl and whisk to combine. Add lemon zest and stir until blended.
2) Place butter into a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer. Cream the butter on medium speed until it is white and fluffy. Add the sugar, and cream again until the mixture returns to fluffiness. Add the vanilla and lemon extracts, and the egg, mixing until each is incorporated.
3) Add flour mixture to butter mixture and mix on very low speed until just incorporated. Place dough into a plastic bag and refrigerate for 1 hour or more.
4) Preheat oven to 350 F. Using a flour-dusted rolling pin and work board, roll the dough - or portions of the dough - into slabs that are 1/4 inch thick. Use a cookie cutter to create shapes and place on a piece of parchment on a cookie sheet.
5) Bake for 10 - 15 minutes, or until cookies are edged with tan, rotating the tray once. Remove tray and let stand 5 minutes before lifting cookies onto a wire cooling rack. Warm cookies may be decorated with granulated sugar. Fully-cooled cookies may be frosted.
NOTE: dough can be refrigerated up to 7 days and frozen up to 6 months.
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