Lemon Tea Cookies #23

I love thumbprint cookies and I love lemon so I thought these sounded good. Michael loves lemon anything and I wanted to make him some type of Valentine's Day dessert we could take to Nashville with us. We're going to see a play tonight and are going out of eat. I figured these would be the perfect tag-along for afterwards.

The case:

Ingredients
Cookies
* 1 cup butter or margarine, softened
* 1/3 cup powdered sugar
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 1 2/3 cups flour
* 1 tablespoon powdered sugar

Filling
* 2/3 cup granulated sugar
* 3 teaspoons lemon peel, grated
* 3 tablespoons lemon juice
* 1 tablespoon butter or margarine
* 1 teaspoon cornstarch
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1 egg, beaten

Directions
1. In large bowl, Beat butter, 1/3 C powdered sugar, and vanilla with mixer on medium speed until well blended.
2. Stir in flour until dough forms.
3. Cover; refrigerate 30 minutes
4. Heat oven to 350°F Shape dough into 1" balls.
5. Place balls 2" apart. Press thumb into center of each ball to make indentation.
6. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until golden brown.
7. Remove to cooling racks and cool completely, about 30 minutes.
8. In 1 qt saucepan, heat all filling ingredients over low heat about 25 minutes, stirring constantly, until smooth and thickened.
9. Cool about 15 minutes.
10.Fill each thumbprint with rounded 1/4 tsp filling. Sprinkle 1 T powdered sugar over cookies.

The ruling:
Where to begin? I had trouble keeping these cookies together after they came out of the oven. They were better after cooling for 30 minutes, but didn't have the great flavor I enjoy in "sugar" cookies. Then I didn't have any cornstarch for the icing so I tried adding some flour but it never thickened right; so I added about a cup of confectioners sugar like I would regular icing. Then, I added some lemon extract and yellow food coloring. All in all, this was not worth the time or effort. Michael ate most of the cookies. They weren't bad, but I know there are simpler and more tasty lemon cookie and thumbprint cookie recipes out there.