Super Mario Bros. Lemony Super Star Cookies. Let’s skip the clever witticisms – YUM, YUM, & YUM!

Ahh, cookies and milk. Really hits the spot, doesn’t it? These are better. No, really. Though my area of Ohio hasn’t exactly been inundated with snow, per se, I’m getting a little cabin fever. This is significant, why?

These cookies taste like a tall glass of iced lemonade on a warm summer’s day. No kidding.

Though I didn’t want to start repeating games so early, these little darlings were just begging to be baked. And Mario is one of my early gaming favorites. We’ll bend the rules a little- just this once, okay? These delightful Super Star Cookies are sweet, crisp, and have a silky lemon glaze that takes you there. And they come in three sizes: Just A Bite, Snackworthy, and OMNOMNOMCookie. Okay, I promise I’m really not that weird about cookies. Ready? Let’s go.

Gamers, grab your mats:

Cookies:

• 2 sticks (1 cup) butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• lemon juice – anything between 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon, to taste. I wasn’t sure everyone else was keen on lemon in my house so I went with the former
• Chocolate chips or Candy Melts for the eyes

Lemon Glaze:

• 1 1/2 cups powdered (confectioner’s) sugar
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice – you may need a little more, depending on your batch yield
• yellow gel food coloring

Featuring 1 large brown egg, courtesy of one of my former art teachers who raises chickens! Yay, responsibly raised chickens!

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. Cream your butter and sugar together in a large bowl with an electric mixer.

Did I mention I have an electric mixer now? Holy crap!

Beat in the vanilla and egg.

Such a pretty egg. I now have a gorgeous mix of brown and blue-green eggs in my fridge. Thanks, Metz!

Set this bowl aside for a moment. Combine your flour and baking powder together in another bowl.

If nothing else, blogging is helping me keep a neater work area.

Add the flour mixture to your first bowl about one cup at a time, mixing well after each addition. This is going to be a very stiff dough; you’ll have to blend the last cup of flour by hand. Besides, it’s not fun unless you’re up to your elbows in flour.

First addition.

Divide your dough into two balls.

Mmm, cookie dough…

Flour your work surface and roll each ball into a circle about 12 inches in diameter and 1/8 inch thick. Did I ever mention how much I suck at measuring? I suck at measuring. Cut your cookies into stars, dipping your cookie cutters in flour before each use. I used the smallest three cutters I had.

Well, here goes nothing, I guess.

First set. I rolled the leftover scraps into another dough ball and got even more cookies. You can never, ever have too many cookies.

Carefully remove the excess dough and transfer cookies to your ungreased baking sheet.

If I remember correctly… about 50 cookies? Something like that. Your yield will vary according to cookie size.

Bake cookies on the middle rack of your oven for 6 to 10 minutes, or until the tips of the stars are lightly browned. Each of my two trays took about 8 minutes. Allow to cool for 2-3 minutes before transferring to cooling rack, parchment paper, or equivalent.

Alright, glaze time.

In a small bowl (or large coffee cup if you know anything about me at all) stir together your powdered sugar and lemon juice. The goal here is a thick, but pourable glaze. You may need to adjust your lemon juice accordingly.

Dribble, dribble, dribble. I promise no seeds made it into the glaze.

Add yellow gel food coloring, enough to make a bright yellow glaze. Mix well.

About twice the amount as pictured seemed to work for me.

See? Glaze!

Fantastic!

I found the easiest way to go about glazing the cookies was to hold each cookie by the inner edges and dip the cookie ‘face’ into the glaze. Some light shaking to remove excess glaze will be in order. If you have any cookies too large to dip, take a small spoonful of glaze and apply directly to the cookie.

Surprisingly I did not get carpal tunnel from this.

Allow glaze to set, about 1 hour. Melt chocolate chips or Candy Melts in the microwave; transfer melted chocolate to a plastic sandwich baggie and snip a small hole in one of the bottom corners of the bag. Working carefully, pipe two chocolate eyes on each cookie. My large cookies required a double wide line whereas the smaller cookies used a substantially smaller amount. Done!

Serve with milk. Believe it or not, this isn’t even all of the cookies! Wonder if these will even make it into work to share…?

So. Freaking. Good. The lemon glaze is so smooth and compliments the cookie perfectly. One note regarding this recipe: This makes a rather crisp cookie. If that’s not your thing you may want to use a similar, more chewy sugar cookie recipe and add the glaze to that. Either way, these little guys are absolutely divine.

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or request please feel free to let me know what’s on your mind! I love hearing from you guys.

Cheers,

Leisel

Coming up next: My all-time favorite childhood game. Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails Mini Cheesecakes! You won’t want to miss this.