Lemon Yogurt Cookies

I've noticed that lemon is a bit of an Italian flavor. So to me it made sense to find a lemon recipe for my Italian family to enjoy while on vacation. I chose a cookie recipe from one of my cookies and bars cookbooks. This one had an ingredient I had never used before: yogurt. Still, I figured it'd be easy to find. Lemon's gotta be a yogurt flavor that all stores have right?

Nope! The only lemon yogurts that Target has are Greek, which I was aware would change the flavor. So to avoid changing it for the worse, I went to Safeway after putting my groceries away at home. They tend to have a lot more flavor options of certain items. Fortunately, yogurt ended up being one of those items. Now all I had left to do was make the cookies.

Blonde Beauties (S'mores Blondies)

Last year I decided to make M&M cookies for Chelan since Nonni wasn't going to be able to make them. I ended up making two other types of cookies as well. Since they were such a hit (I had all three containers empty and clean by Wednesday of our week, if I remember correctly), I figured I'd repeat that this year. Other than the family-favorite M&M cookies, I chose two flavors that I was pretty sure the family would love: s'mores and lemon. After looking through my s'mores recipe book, I picked a s'mores blondie bar.

Fireworks Pudding Cookies

We have many opportunities to work overtime on Saturdays at my job. This year I started working the occasional Saturday (between season tickets to The 5th Avenue Theatre and to the Seattle Mariners, I need the extra cash for meals). I've noticed on Mondays that food is usually brought in on Saturdays (start time is 7 a.m. after all) so I decided to do that too. For a late June Saturday overtime, I figured patriotic cookies for the upcoming 4th of July holiday would be perfect. I searched my Patriotic/4th of July Pinterest board and found a recipe similar to what I made two years ago. I even bought the ingredients the week before so I didn't have to rush to the store after work on Friday then rush home.

And then Saturday overtime was cancelled.

So after spending a few days trying to figure out what to do with the ingredients (specifically the pudding mix - I'm not really a pudding eater), I decided to still make the cookies. Like two years ago, we had a work day between the 4th and the weekend. Cookies seemed like the perfect thing to make up for it (again). The recipe is from Crazy for Crust.