Alice's Lemon Basil Cookie Sandwiches

780 g flour
2 t baking powder
1 t salt
2 C butter, room temp

4 oz cream cheese, room temp
400 g sugar
2 eggs
1 T vanilla extract
1 t lemon extract

3 T finely chopped fresh basil
2 T lemon zest

44 g warm water

23 g fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 t oil free vanilla extract
26 g meringue powder
450 g powdered sugar, sifted
15 g or 1 T light corn syrup

1 C butter, room temp
540 g powdered sugar, sifted
2 T heavy cream
1/8 salt, finely ground
2 1/2 T lemon juice
1 T lemon zest

Sep 30: Make Cookie Dough
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, powder, and salt.
In a stand mixer, cream butter, cream cheese, and sugar.

Beat in eggs, extracts, basil, and zest.
Incorporate dry ingredients just until combined.
Divide dough into two discs.
Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and let chill at least 4 hours.
Roll dough onto a floured surface to a quarter inch.

Oct 01: Make Royal Icing & Shape Dough
Combine warm water, lemon juice, and vanilla extract.
Weigh meringue powder into stand mixer bowl.
Pour liquid into meringue powder.
Mix on medium low for 1 min, or until homogenous and frothy.
Add sifted sugar and mix until combined, still on medium low.
Turn speed to medium high and whip 3 mins.
Royal icing should be thick and hold stiff peaks.
Stir in corn syrup.

Cover and let rest overnight.

Roll dough to 1/4" in four batches.
Cut and freeze cookies using a 2" biscuit cutter.
Can re-roll leftovers; will yield 120 cookies.
Using a 1 3/4" circle cutter, score the tops of 60 cookies.
Freeze cookie dough overnight.

Oct 02: Bake Cookies & Flood

Once icing has rested, it's easier to remove air bubbles.
Stir about 2 T of royal icing with very little water.
Fit to a piping bag with a PME 1.5 tip.

Separately make a 20-25 second flooding icing.

Distribute into 2 silicone piping bottles.

Let flooding icing rest so bubbles rise to the top.

Arrange 20 frozen cookies per tray.
Bake from frozen at 325° convection bake for 11 mins.

Store unscored baked cookies in airtight container and set aside.

Gather the 60 cooled, scored, cookies.

Pipe borders around/outside scoring.
Store piping royal icing in an airtight container with a damp rag.

Flood bordered cookies, piping in center and scribing outwards.
Fill about 2/3rds the area with twice the height of the finished icing.
Piping in the center prevents border spillage.
More importantly, it raises the middles for "EAT ME."

Pop bubbles with scribe tool as needed and let cure overnight.

Oct 03: Decorate Top Cookies
Stamp and fill in unstamped areas by hand with food color pen.
Fit yesterday's piping royal icing with a nice fat Wilton 2 tip.

Pipe around icing joint.

Drop upside down into a bowl of sparkly sugar.

Using a very small spatula, adjust sparkles if necessary.

Cover loosely; can move on to next day's tasks if there's time.

Oct 04: Make Frosting, Sandwich Together, & Store

Beat butter until creamy.
Add sugar and heavy cream on low speed.
Dissolve salt into lemon juice.
Add lemon juice and zest.
Beat on high for 3 mins.

Generously pipe buttercream onto bottom cookies.

Gently top with decorated cookies.
Let buttercream crust for several hours.
Once stable, wrap tightly with seran wrap and store at room temp.
Allow a couple days for moisture to migrate from frosting into cookies.
(Maturing like macarons, even though sugar cookies are less spongy!)