Po' mom's cookie - possible official recipe

(Sure to give Alice a chuckle.)

With all sorts of family in town including my sister-in-law, Kathleen, I had a primo opportunity to learn Kat's secret lemon cream cheese cookie recipe. I shamelessly showed her a lemon and a bar of cream cheese that I "just so happened" to have in the fridge. I also showed her if she wanted various ingredients, trying to figure out what she uses in the recipe.

With all that shameless spying, she still managed to get by me with the most mysterious part of the recipe: the sugar and flour proportion. I must have gotten distracted by kids and not realized that she started because when I turned around, there was a bowl of white powder mixture and I didn't know how much it was. I actually tried stealing the bowl to remeasure it, but in an effort to stop me from remeasuring, she admitted to using a 1/2 cup measure. Hmmm... Tom suggested I dump out the bowl so she'd have to make it again. In the interest of family harmony, I let it go.

I didn't give up completely though. Then I sank lower: I started asking Kelsey, my 6-year old niece who helps Kat with the baking. Kelsey leaked that Kat uses 1 cup of flour and 2 cups of sugar. Come to think of it, my sugar box is significantly lighter. Also, Kat said that she put the leftover butter in the butter dish, which meant she didn't use a whole stick. With some crafty detective work, I saw that she left about half a stick of butter in my dish. I'm smart.

2 c sugar (pawned from Kelsey)
1 c flour (pawned from Kelsey)
1/2 stick of butter (1/2 left in butter dish), softened
unknown baking powder
unknown baking soda
unknown vanilla extract, but she reached for it herself so I know she uses some
pinch of salt
1 lemon, zest and juice

But she did use the 1/2 cup measure (presumably for the dry ingredients) which has kind of thrown me off. Could Kelsey be wrong?

Previous attempts at the lemon cream cheese cookie have left me a little dumbfounded but with this new development, I have hope.