Corn Meal Cookies

I love cornbread! It's great with almost any southern dinner, but here is an old recipe that my great grandmother, Mama Wiley used to serve at breakfast or after dinner. These cookies are sweet but with a few changes I was able to make them MUCH more versatile by add a little zing.

1 cup shortening
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp. lemon zest
2 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 cup raisins
3 cups cake flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup yellow corn meal
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Cream the shortening and sugar together; add in the eggs, zest, and lemon juice and stir until well incorporated. Add the raisins into the wet ingredients and set aside.
In a larger bowl sift the cake flour, baking powder and salt together. Add the nutmeg and corn meal, gently stirring to incorporate. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until the dough forms.
These are drop cookies so work them as if you were making chocolate chip cookies: take a tsp. of dough and drop each cookie onto a cookie sheet lined with a silicone mat. Bake at 400 for 10-12 min. or until brown around the edges. Cool on a rack before tasting. 

For the variation: use 3/4 cup sugar instead of 1 1/2 cups. Also add 1 T. of Ancho Chili Powder (or a good chili powder of your choice), 1/4 tsp. of cumin and 1/4 tsp. of cayenne into the dry ingredients before sifting. These are GREAT as an appetizer with drinks before a football game!!