a lemon moon

My daughter's birthday is at the end of June so she never got to celebrate it at school.

One year, she was at Girl Scout camp during her birthday. The camp prohibited all sweets so I brought the largest watermelon I could find for her cabin to celebrate. The cooks in the kitchen made a mistake and cut up the melon for a regular meal, ruining her birthday treat on her first birthday away from home. She was disappointed. I was devastated. I had driven a couple hundred miles, roundtrip, to get that watermelon to her.

One year, in, I think, the 5th grade, we celebrated her 'half' birthday, the halfway point in the year between her birthdays, in late February. I didn't want to be ordinary and do cupcakes. I special ordered a large, crescent moon of a cookie. It was yellow because it was a tart lemon cookie, with tart lemon frosting. It was a gobsmacking glorious cookie, the kind that would sell for a few dollars a piece nowadays.

When I discovered these lemon moons, the bakery was selling them for about a dollar apiece. They were small half moons, about two inches long. The baker, however, who made our special order lemon moons chose to make gigantic cookies: each cookie was the equivalent mass of about five of the cookies I had ordered. I had prepaid. We got those gigantic cookies for a fraction of what they should have cost.

They were so sweet that none of the children had managed to eat an entire one. And Katie's teacher teased me about giving the children so much sugar. And he teased me that he had shared his cookie with his two children during their lunch break -- and still had leftovers.

Those lemon moon cookies were a lovely, magical gift in bleak midwinter February.

I was just in the Oakland Whole Foods. Suddenly, I craved a lemon cookie. They had some cookies on sale called 'lemon lush'. I knew, at a glance, that the lemon lush would not sate my desire.

I think those lemon moons, from long ago, were a bit like shortbread, with lots of lemony bits in the batter and a very tart lemon frosting. If I had anyone to bake for, I might try to replicate them. Gosh, they were delicious. I won't make them. Too much trouble for one diabetic who shouldn't eat them anyway.

Maybe I will look for a lemon-frosted scone. Sometimes they sell them at my Peets.