Easy Lemon Sugar Cookies

A new blog post, and only 11 days after Sophie joined the family. This is proof that I’m running on the fumes of a crazy sleepless person.

I have a helper for these ones, yesterday Anna wanted to make some cookies for Oliver’s after school snack. I think she probably just plain wanted to make cookies and knew that telling me they were for Oliver would melt me enough to jump into action. It all turned out to be worth it though, as these are delicious. I just started hunting around the web for a new cookie recipe. I was actually looking for something chocolate, but stumbled across this recipe on pinterest (you’ve just got to love pinterest) that I adapted a little.

Anna was all in on these cookies. First off, dump the sugar and butter into your mixer.

Voila.

Cream together until nice and fluffy. Anna would not look away.

Perfect.

Add your lemon juice and zest…

A couple of eggs…

And some vanilla.

Mix it up until well combined.

Dump in the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder.

Turn the mixer on low until just combined.

Or be like Anna and crank it up so flour flies everywhere because Mommy’s too busy taking pictures to actually be supervising.

Here’s the finished dough.

Roll into balls about the size of a ping pong ball. I used a small spoon and heaped it out a bit.

Roll the balls in some powdered sugar. Anna was a fan of this because apparently it means that you can lick your fingers between each cookie.

Then put them onto your lined cookie sheet.

Flatten them down a bit. The bottom of a glass would do a much better job of this, but Anna likes to get her hands into things so I let her at it.

While the first sheets were baking Anna went to town on the rest of the dough for me. Unfortunately she prefers to roll logs, not balls (the last cookies we made were almond crescents). She’s darn good at making those logs though.

When the cookies come out of the oven, just remove to a cooling rack.

Here’s the finished cookies! For half of them I mixed a few spoonfuls of icing sugar with just enough lemon juice to make it runny, then drizzled it over the cookies with a spoon. I was worried the glaze might be too sour for the kids, and because Murphy’s law, the kids prefer the glazed cookies, and I prefer them plain.

Here’s your printable:

Easy Lemon Sugar Cookies

Yield: 5 dozen cookies

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Print

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 large eggs
• Zest of one lemon
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp baking powder
• ¼ tsp baking soda
• 3 cups flour
• 1 cup icing sugar

Optional Glaze

• 1+ cups icing sugar
• 2+ tbsp lemon juice

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 350ºF and line your cookie sheets.
3. Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
5. Add the vanilla, eggs, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Mix until well combined.
7. Add the salt, baking powder, baking soda, and flour. Stir in gently until just combined.
9. Roll the dough into ping pong sized balls (use a heaping teaspoon to scoop out of the bowl). Roll the balls into the powdered sugar and place onto your cookie sheet. Gently flatten the balls with the bottom of a glass dipped in the powdered sugar to prevent sticking.
11. Bake for about 10 minutes, until the edges barely begin to be kissed by brown. Transfer to a cooling rack.
13. If you want to drizzle on a glaze, simply mix together the additional 1 cup of powdered sugar with about 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Adjust with more sugar or lemon juice as needed to get a somewhat runny consistency, then just use a spoon to lightly drizzle over the cookies. A little goes a long way here.