Maple syrup cookie sandwiches with lemon cream filling

This was a very yummy treat on a very snowbound Saturday. With the warnings against driving and the constantly falling snow all day long dashing my hopes of roasting a chicken for dinner, I decided to search in my baking books for something I could make with whatever I have in the house, and came up with these lovely cookies, a 1930s era recipe from "Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters," one of my favorites. The only thing I didn't have was the maple extract, which I skipped, and as the recipe foretold, the cookies themselves were not very mapley in flavor, though they are absolutely delightful nonetheless. I also didn't have a pastry bag to pipe the cookies, which made them much bigger on the cookie sheet and thus I ended up with about 13 instead of 30, oops. Also, since this is the middle of winter, the lemon cream filling is in no danger of melting, as the Brass Sisters warn. For lack of a standing mixer, I didn't beat the lemon cream very long, so I wonder if a longer beating time might have made a smoother and stickier frosting -- this stuff dried right up.

For the cookies: sift together 2 cups flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp baking soda. Mix together 1 cup maple syrup, 1/2 cup butter, 1 egg. Gradually beat in sifted ingredients and add 2 tsp maple extract, if using. Chill batter in the fridge until firm enough to pipe in a bag (I used a ziplock bag with a small cut in the corner). Pipe onto a baking sheet covered in greased tin foil (shiny side up). Make cookies 1.5" in diameter, about 20 cookies per sheet. Bake 18 minutes @ 350° until golden brown. Cool on the sheet 2 minutes, then transfer to a rack.

Lemon cream filling: sift 2 cups confectioners' sugar and 1/8 tsp salt in a bowl. Cream in 1/2 cup room temperature butter. Whisk in 3 tsp lemon zest and 4 tsp lemon juice (I skipped the zest and used a powdered lemon equivalent with a little bit of water). Put filling in a pastry bag or ziplock and pipe on to the cookies and cover. I found the best technique was to pipe a ribbon around the very edge of the cookie, to ensure it will show on the side when closed. In hot weather, refridgerate and remove 10 minutes before serving, but in cold weather, even with the heat on, mine were fine on a plate in the kitchen! Also fine in my mouth, yum.