Today on Sugar Spun Run I'll be showing you how to make lemon cookies.
Hey Sugar Spun Bakers! Sam here and today I'm sharing an easy, no chilling required
recipe for lemon cookies. I think you're going to enjoy this recipe. So let's go
ahead and get started. Now the first thing you want to do is pre-heat your
oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Next you are going to need a large mixing bowl, or
a stand mixer, either one will do fine, and to that bowl we are going to be
adding two sticks, or in my case, where I have half sticks, four sticks, or one cup
of unsalted butter. and you want this to be softened.
I don't know who decided to make these into half sticks because when I bake with butter I don't mess around.
We always need more than half sticks.
It's not a diet channel.
The next thing you're going to need is one and a half cups of granulated sugar, and we are
using just granulated sugar, no brown sugar for today's recipe.
In a lot of my recipes I like to use granulated sugar and brown sugar, but here I found that
the brown sugar kind of bullies the lemon flavor a little bit. Meanwhile, if we use
granulated sugar it helps the lemon flavor really shine through. You get a
more distinct lemon taste. Now the next thing you are going to need is two and a half
tablespoons of freshly grated lemon zest. I usually find that I need two full lemons to get enough zest for this.
I'm just going to grate these over a piece of wax paper that way it catches all of my zest
Now whenever you're zesting a lemon you want to make sure that you don't go too deep. Now all of the flavor
is mostly contained in this bright yellow rind and just a little bit below
the surface. You can see it gets to be less yellow as you go deeper. If you get
to this bright white layer here this is called the pith. It's actually very
bitter. It's right above the flesh of the lemon, the actual juicy part of the lemon, but you do
not want to be zesting that or we're going to have bitter cookies. So stop right when you get to that white part.
Make sure we get everything we can off this lemon. I don't want to be lazy here.
I don't waste anything.
I know I'm out of shape because this is making my arms tired.
Add this lemon zest right in there with our sugar and our butter.
That may have been a smidge closer to three tablespoons than two and a half but
we're just gonna roll with it now you're gonna want to grab an electric mixer, if
you're not using a stand mixer, and we're going to cream these ingredients
together until they are light and fluffy and nicely combined.
I like to add the zest at this point because while we're mixing everything together it's getting
beaten up with the butter and the sugar and some of those oils are being
released. It's going to help give you a more flavorful lemon cookie.
Now we're going to be adding one large egg plus one egg yolk.
I like using that extra egg yolk in these cookies because it helps make the
cookies a little bit more chewy, a little bit more tender. We are also going to be
We are also going to be adding just 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
And one teaspoon of lemon extract. Make sure you actually like the smell of the lemon extract that you're
using. I've used some of the past that just smell like cleaner, and the
flavor just does not come out right in the cookies. So make sure you're using a quality lemon extract.
I will use our mixer again to stir everything together.
Alright now we're going to need to grab a separate bowl for our dry
ingredients. We're going to start with three cups of all-purpose flour. Now, if
you haven't already, I really recommend you watch my video on how to properly
measure flour, because if your cookies come out dry, or crumbly, or if they don't
spread properly, it's probably because you've used a little bit too much flour,
you may have weighed it incorrectly.
I really recommend checking out that video for any recipe that uses flour.
We'll also be using two teaspoons of cornstarch.
One and a half teaspoons of cream of tartar.
3/4 teaspoon of baking soda
And just 1/2 teaspoon of salt.
We'll stir these together so everything is well combined.
Now we'll gradually stir our dry ingredients into our wet ingredients until everything is completely combined.
When I was pregnant with Luke last year we did a lot of lemon recipes. We did
lemon cupcakes, lemon brownies, and lemonade, and it was right when I first
started to get morning sickness, and it took me a long time to be able to smell lemon again after that.
Other things I couldn't stand included Chick-Fil-A and granite countertops
It was a weird time in my life.
Add the last of it in there.
We'll just briefly scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl. Make sure everything is
completely combined. You don't want any flour pockets hiding in your dough.
Looks like I did a pretty good job.
I love recipes like this that don't
require any chilling because I'm not very patient when it comes to cookies. So
our dough is ready at this point, and we can start baking our cookies. Now I'm
going to be scooping level, one and a half tablespoon size scoops
And I'm just going to drop that into my palm and roll it into a smooth ball.
And then I'm going to roll this through some powdered sugar.
We'll space our cookies about two inches apart on the baking sheet because they
are going to spread some in the oven. I usually don't measure my powdered
sugar. I'd say this is about a half cup and I probably won't use all of it.
Alright let's take these over to our 350 degrees Fahrenheit preheated oven where
they'll need to make for about 11 minutes.
Now you'll want to let your lemon cookies cool completely on the baking sheet because when you first
pull them out of the oven they'll be slightly underdone, and they're going to finish
baking completely on the cookie sheet. I love doing this because it helps keep
the cookies really nice, and soft, and chewy. Otherwise if you cook them too
much they're gonna be a little bit hard and crunchy, which I'm not a fan of. And
that is how easy it is to make lemon cookies at home. I hope you guys enjoyed
today's recipe. If you try it please let me know what you think. I always love
hearing from you. Thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
It's so good