Are you looking for a fun twist on a traditional sugar cookie? Well, look no further! Here I will teach you how to make delicious and easy homemade lemon sugar cookies from scratch. These cookies are light in taste and chewy in texture making them the perfect spring or summer treat!
Table of Contents
Why I Love These Easy Homemade Lemon Sugar Cookies
I really enjoy making these cookies for a few reasons which I will lay out here.
- They are so easy and quick to make. I can have them made and ready to eat in about 25 minutes which is pretty darn fast!
- They taste amazing! Now, just to clarify, I LOVE lemon flavored anything. And my favorite cookies are my no chill sugar cookies. So this recipe is a combination of two of my most favorite things. The recipe below will give you a mild lemon taste in addition to the wonderful taste and texture of sugar cookies.
- It is customizable. If you only like a little bit of a lemon taste, you can stick to only using lemon juice. If you really like the taste of lemon, you can add as much lemon zest as your taste buds can handle.
Equipment to Make Lemon Sugar Cookies
This is a really simple recipe so you can make these with just a bowl, measuring cups and cookie sheets. However, if you want to make your life easier, I stongly recommend using a stand mixer. Mine is a KitchenAid with a 4.5 qt bowl and I love it. It makes my baking life so much easier! It is also nice to have cookie sheets that come with wire cooling racks. The cookies continue to bake for a minute or two after coming out of the oven and then they become nice a chewy by cooling on these wire racks. Lastly, I like using a cookie scoop to make each cookie the same size.
Real Lemons vs. Lemon Juice in Your Homemade Lemon Sugar Cookies
My opinion on this might end up being controversial. But here it is. I cannot tell the difference between using fresh lemons and lemon juice in this recipe. There, I said it! So don’t feel bad if all you have in your house is some lemon juice because you can achieve delicious and easy homemade lemon sugar cookies with just that.
I will admit that they taste more lemony (is this a word?) if you have the privilege of adding some lemon zest to the cookies. But some people are put off by the little bits that the zest makes in the cookies so it is totally up to you and who your cookie tasters are.
Ingredients and Alternatives for Lemon Sugar Cookies
- All purpose flour is a must for these cookies. They need this type of four to get the smooth, chewy texture that makes these cookies so good.
- Baking soda and baking powder are both agents that helps these cookies rise and spread.
- Salt is needed if you use unsalted butter. However, if you use salted butter you can omit the additional salt.
- Lemon juice. This is the most important ingredient in these. You can juice fresh lemons oruse bottled lemon juice. If you choose to juice, you will probably find that you need 2 large lemons for this recipe.
- Lemon zest is optional but a nice touch if you want these to be a little more tart.
- I prefer to use granulated sugar for this recipe. Just plain old regular sugar works best. I have tried coconut sugar with some success as well. Remember to keep 1/2 cup of sugar aside for rolling the dough balls in.
- Unsalted or salted butter. Just remember to not add more salt if you use salted butter.
- Large egg.
- Vanilla extract.
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Easy Homemade Lemon Sugar Cookies Recipe
Easy Homemade Lemon Sugar Cookies
Equipment
- 1 Stand Mixer
- 1 Cookie Sheet
- 1 wire cooling rack
- 1 cookie scoop optional
Ingredients
- 2¾ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 large lemons (if you want to add some zest to the cookies in the sugar coating)
- 1½ cups granulated sugar
- 1 cup salted butter
- 1 large Egg
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 2 TBSP lemon juice (feel free to add up to a TBSP more if you want more lemon taste)
- ½ cup sugar for rolling in
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350℉ and line the cookie sheets with parchment paper. In a small bowl add 1/2 cup of sugar and optional lemon zest and mix well. Set aside.
- In a stand mixer or bowl add the wet ingredients all together (butter, egg, sugar, vanilla, lemon juice) and mix well.
- Next, add the dry ingredients into the same bowl (flour, baking powder, baking soda) and mix everything until it forms a dough.
- Take your 2 TBSP cookie scoop and make 30 dough balls.
- Roll each dough ball into the extra sugar and optional lemon zest so they are well coated and then place them onto the cookie sheet.
- Once all the coated dough balls are on the cookie sheet, you can flatten then with a fork.
- Place the cookie sheets into oven and bake at 350 ℉ for 8-10 minutes.
- Allow the cookies to cool on the cookie sheet for 2-5 minutes and then move them to cooling racks until they have cooled completely.
- You can freeze these cookies once they are cooled if you want to keep them for future use. You can also freeze the dough by creating dough balls and freezing them. Then you can just pull out the dough when you want to bake them.
Notes
More Easy Homemade Cookie Recipes
- Best No Chill Sugar Cookies
- Sourdough Peanut Butter Cookies
- Easy Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Buttercup Squash Cookies
Thank you for taking the time to read this post and I hope you enjoyed baking these easy homemade lemon sugar cookies! Let me know if you made any changes to them to make them even better. I would also love it if you could share this simple recipe with someone who might enjoy it.
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