Lemon Wafers

A plain rolled sugar cookie with no leavening and no liquid but lemon juice, which means the dough's handling matters more than anything else. The original gives no oven temperature, no baking time and no yield.

• Flour is the unmeasured variable"Flour enough to make as soft a dough as can be rolled" works out to roughly 3 1/2 to 4 cups for this quantity of butter, sugar and egg. Add it in stages and stop while the dough is still tacky rather than stiff; excess flour is what turns these from crisp to dry.
• Chill before rollingThe dough as mixed is too soft to roll thin at room temperature. Wrap and refrigerate at least an hour, then work with a quarter of it at a time and keep the rest cold.
• Lemon juiceA large lemon yields about 3 tablespoons. The grated zest carries far more flavor than the juice and is worth adding, though the original omits it.
• No salt, no leaveningNeither appears here, and none is needed for a wafer to be a wafer. A half teaspoon of salt sharpens the whole thing considerably if you want it.
• OvenRoll to about 1/8 inch and bake at 350-375F for 6 to 9 minutes, until the edges just color. Thin wafers go from pale to burnt in under a minute, so watch the first tray and time the rest by it.
• The variationsFor vanilla, substitute a tablespoon of extract for the juice; for orange, an equal quantity of orange juice and zest. Chocolate needs an adjustment the book does not mention: replace about 1/2 cup of the flour with cocoa, or work in 2 ounces of melted unsweetened chocolate and reduce the flour accordingly.
• YieldA 2 1/2-inch cutter will give a very large number of wafers, on the order of eight dozen or more. This is a party-sized batch; halving it is reasonable.
• StorageThey crisp as they cool and must be fully cool before they go into a tin. Kept airtight they hold their snap for a week or more.