You have come to the right place if you are looking to make an Amerikaner straight from a German bakery!
Ingredients:
125 g (½ cup) soft butter
125 g (1 cup) sugar
1 package vanilla sugar
salt
zest from half lemon
2 eggs
250 g (1 cup) flour
50 g (¼ cup) cornstarch
2 teaspoons baking powder
4 tablespoons buttermilk
200 g (1 cup) confectioners’ sugar
1-2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
Instructions:
Mix butter with mixer until smooth. Mix sugar, vanilla sugar, salt, and lemon zest together, then add little-by-little to butter mixture and mix in. One-by-one, add eggs and mix for about 30 seconds until thick and yellow-coloured dough is formed.
Mix flour, corn starch, and baking powder, then sieve and add alternately with buttermilk to yellow-coloured mixture.
Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F). Place parchment paper on two cookie sheets.
Use 2 teaspoons to drop a total of 6 heaps of dough on each cookie sheet.
Bake one sheet first, then the second, each for 20 to 25 minutes. Once done, take out from oven and let cool down.
Mix together powdered sugar and lemon juice, then mix half of lemon mixture with cocoa powder, and mix other half of lemon mixture with sugar.
Once cooled, use food brush and paint half of flat side of cookies with sugar-lemon mixture and other half with cocoa-lemon mixture, then let dry.