Lemon Sandwich Cookies

Birthday cupcakes around my office are kind of a tradition; my friend Evan and I pump out cupcakes for almost every birthday. So naturally, when one of my closest friends (not only at the office, but in all of the Tampa Bay Area) turned 26, I'm sure my co-workers expected cupcakes. What they don't know is Vanessa has been bombarded with variations of Evan and my lemon cupcakes as of late, in preparation for her wedding. Two things I suppose I should clarify:

1. Evan and I are baking all of the cupcakes and the wedding cake for Vanessa's September wedding. 
2. Lemon desserts are Vanessa's favorite.

In an effort to keep Vanessa from hating lemon cupcakes before her wedding day, I turned to Google to switch things up. I searched the web for "easy lemon desserts" where I found this great cookie recipe for which I had all the ingredients--this was of paramount importance because, let's be real, I was (still am) coming down with the plague and did not want to go tote a toddler around Publix. Yes, last night I baked for my co-workers while sick, sanitary, I know.

After putting Mila to bed and scrubbing and sanitizing both my entire kitchen and myself, I went to work. Ingredient number one, cornmeal. Perfect, I am a cornmeal snob. My cornmeal is stone ground in Helen, Georgia, and delivered to me by my mommy. This is the cornmeal she uses to make her cornbread and the only kind to use, in my opinion. So to the cupboard I went, looking for my bag of cornmeal.Voilà! I took out the bag, so proud of its contents, opened it and EWWWWW!

Mealworms.

Ryan to the rescue! He removed the bag and disposed of it in the outside trash, leaving me heartbroken, ashamed of my pretentiousness, feeling like bugs were crawling all over my body and with the task of emptying out the whole cupboard, checking all the food and disinfecting. So I did. After re-scrubbing and re-sanitizing both my entire kitchen and myself, I went back to work.

No cornmeal, what to do? Pancake mix. Okay, not really the same thing but Evan swears by it in her cookies, it's bound to work here too, right? I measured out the pancake mix and added a teaspoon of salt then opened a different cupboard to retrieve the flour when I noticed a box of cornbread mix. Cornbread mix has cornmeal in it! I scrapped the pancake and salt mixture and started again.

Things went smoothly from that point. I finished making the dough, got the cookies in the oven and refocused on starting the filling. Remember these are sandwich cookies, they require filling! Ryan had been helping in the kitchen all night, since there was so much cleaning going on. In my delirious, foggy sickness I told Ryan I was done with the fresh squeezed lemon juice so he dumped it and washed the bowl. Crap. No lemon juice. I opened the refrigerator in desperation. BOOM. Lemon curd. Thank God.

Moral of the story? Cornbread mix and lemon curd saved these cookies and made them absolutely delicious. I will never make them without either of these ingredients.

Lemon Sandwich Cookies

By the way, "Cookie Man" stopped by our office today. He's a middle-aged, white-haired hippie with Harry Potter glasses who sells homemade cookies to our staff biweekly. Vanessa let him try one of these Frankenstein cookies--let's just say, I impressed someone who's nickname is "Cookie Man" with these babies!

My Lemon Sammies vs. Cookie Man's Death by Chocolate

♥A