Lemon Cookies

Yesterday was Anthony's company party. It was an afternoon cruise on the Willamette River, which was nice, but it was very cold out on deck! It was also a bit challenging because they had dessert without having a fruit choice. Sigh. Dessert is still really hard for me not to partake in. It helps to have something else to munch on, but there was no choice. On top of having had salad for lunch (because the other choices were not vegan or healthy - those I had no problem saying no to - lunch meats, cheese cubes, cheesy raviolis and some sort of chicken thing), it was hard watching people enjoy the desserts. One of the ones that called to me the most was the lemon bars.

Saturday is our dessert night this month, so after dinner, I got out the food processor and started creating.

I started with our basic raw cookie blend of a little less than 1 cup of walnuts and about 1 cup of rolled oats (which I understand are not totally raw, but then, neither are we, so it's okay) and ran it until it looked like small crumbs.

Then I got out the dates. Now, usually I'd put in about 1 cup, maybe more, with that amount of walnuts and oats, but we only had about 1/2 cup, so I supplemented with raisins, not sure how it would turn out, but it turned out fine.

This time, I zested a lemon, added that, then squeezed in the juice, as well. If I had it to do over, I'd have blended in the dried fruit before adding the lemon juice, as the juice made it all stick together much better than it usually does without a little effort, but some scraping down and patience worked just fine.

Once the dried fruit was well chopped and blended, I started forming. I just made little round cookie shapes and that was that. My hands smelled nice and lemony all evening.

Davan and I really, really loved these little cookies. Davan said they reminded her of Lemon Coolers (a type of Girl Scout cookie back when we ate them) and I was feeling my lemon bar envy just melt away. Anthony said they were a little walnut-y for him. We usually make these with raw cocoa powder instead and I suspect that masks the walnut taste more. For him, I'd probably go half walnuts and half cashews were I making these lemon ones again.

Sorry I didn't think to take pictures, but try them out anyway! They're yummy! I ate way more than I probably should have, but at least I don't feel like I'm polluting my body. There were some left over and Davan has planned out having one a day all week. As for me, no more dessert (other than fruit) until next Saturday when we'll do something different, most likely!