{Recipe} Lemon Crinkle Cookies (2024)

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68 · Sep 7, 2011 · 47 Comments

Lemons are the quintessential summer fruit and though our summers are {hopefully} winding down to a dull burn, we can still enjoy the pleasures that this snappy little citrus provides.

Conjured into life by Lauren Brennan, these gently sweet, chewy and tender Lemon Crinkle Cookies are award winning, and you’ll know why the moment you take one bite and let the flavors dance on your tongue. Stirred up with zest and freshly squeezed lemon juice and rolled in a soft dusting of powdered sugar, they are the perfect punch for your lemon craving.

Here’s the recipe:

Lemon Crinkle Cookies

By Lauren Brennan

Makes 2-3 dozen (if you don’t get generous in your scooping)

Ingredients:

½ cups butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 whole egg
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
¼ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoons baking powder
⅛ teaspoons baking soda
1-½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cups powdered sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease light colored baking sheets with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Whip in vanilla, egg, lemon zest, and juice. Scrape sides and mix again. Stir in all dry ingredients slowly until just combined, excluding the powdered sugar. Scrape sides of bowl and mix again briefly. Pour powdered sugar onto a large plate. Roll a heaping teaspoon of dough into a ball and roll in powdered sugar. Place on baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough.

Bake for 9-11 minutes or until bottoms begin to barely brown and cookies look matte {not melty or shiny}. Remove from oven and cool cookies about 3 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

*If using a non-stick darker baking tray, reduce baking time by about 2 minutes.

Now, try to keep you kids from weedling you into giving them handfuls so they can have one little treat in their lunch boxes tomorrow. Good luck!

For another aaaaamazing lemon recipe from Christene you have to check out her Lemon Curd Cheesecake or if Chocolate and Peanutbutter are more your style you have to check out this recipe!

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Reader Interactions

Comments

trish says
September 7, 2011 at 4:34 am

YUM! This sounds good! I can’t wait to try it! Printing your recipe right…now!
Reply
susan@pocacosa says
September 7, 2011 at 7:07 am

yummilicious!
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Shona says
September 7, 2011 at 7:54 am

Those sound amazing! We love anything with lemons. Your photo is gorgeous too! Thanks for sharing!
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Emily says
September 7, 2011 at 7:59 am

Wow! Heather, these look so delicious and I love the styling in your photograph 🙂
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Angi says
September 7, 2011 at 8:56 am

Yummy. Gotta try to make these. 🙂
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Ellie G says
September 7, 2011 at 9:34 am

Ummm….yeah…I have a lemon recipe ready for this week! I LOVE lemon. Like, adore. I can’t wait to try these! Yummers!
Reply
Amanda says
September 7, 2011 at 9:53 am

Great lookin cookies!
Reply
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Jo-Anna says
September 7, 2011 at 11:03 am

Oh these look delish! And an amazing photo!!
Jo-Anna
Reply
Kim says
September 7, 2011 at 1:04 pm

Do you think I could leave out the lemon juice and zest and substitue almond extract? If so, how much would I add to keep the consistency of the cookies right?
Reply
- Christene {WhipperBerry} says
  September 7, 2011 at 8:12 pm
  
  Kim, you’d have to mess with it. There’s a whole Tablespoon of juice that you put in, so you might have to add milk. Let’s say 2 t. milk and 1 t. almond extract while omitting the zest entirely. Try it out. My dough was very soft. You could test out the moisture by adding a little milk at a time to be sure. Let me know how it turns out!
  Reply
Diane {Created by Diane} says
September 7, 2011 at 5:12 pm

Oh how I love lemon….and I do love the way they “pucker” up too 🙂 they look delicious.
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Alison @ Ingredients, Inc. says
September 7, 2011 at 5:33 pm

wow so pretty
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Squash Blossom Babies says
September 7, 2011 at 6:12 pm

WOW! These look great! I want one!
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marla says
September 7, 2011 at 6:54 pm

Such sweet & pretty little cookies 🙂
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Christene {WhipperBerry} says
September 7, 2011 at 8:14 pm

Thanks for the love, ladies! I hope you try and enjoy these sweet little gems!
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Brenda @ a farmgirl's dabbles says
September 7, 2011 at 8:23 pm

Your photo is gorgeous! I love a good puckery lemon dessert. These cookies look delightful.
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Beth R. says
September 8, 2011 at 1:48 pm

ohhh I’m going to have to try and make these gluten free.. they sound delicious!
Reply
- Heather says
  September 8, 2011 at 1:49 pm
  
  Let me know if you do! I would love to learn how…
  kisses
  heather
  Reply
Rachelle @ The Shabby Tulip says
September 12, 2011 at 10:36 pm
See Also
The Original Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites Recipe (aka Chickpea Cookies) - Texanerin Baking

Oh goodness! I made these for a get together this evening and everyone RAVED about them! Wonderful recipe…definitely one for the book;)
Reply
Morsels of Life says
September 29, 2011 at 5:03 pm

These cookies look quite tasty – and pretty!
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Toni says
January 9, 2012 at 10:00 am

How much of the baking soda?? Thanks!
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Sana says
January 9, 2012 at 5:17 pm

Hey there, I made these yummy cookies a while ago in Germany (where everybody loved them) using unsalted butter cause this is what’s normal for us. Now I am in the States and started wondering if you actually meant unsalted butter.
And is it really inportant to make a ball and roll it in the powdered sugar? Cause I had some troubles forming balls.
Reply
sweetsugarbelle says
January 20, 2012 at 11:00 pm

Happy birthday to me…literally. YOu posted on my birthday. HOW appropriate!
Reply
Lorraina Allen says
January 29, 2012 at 4:08 pm

Do you flatten them before baking or do they flatten themselves during baking?
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- vg says
  February 15, 2012 at 6:29 am
  
  I made them last night, and just put them on the pan as balls. Mine didn’t flatten like these, they were more domed. So next time I’ll try flattening them a little.
  Reply
sarah says
March 3, 2012 at 1:40 pm

Just made these with Meyer lemons and they are freakin’ awesome! Definitely a keeper in my recipe book – thx!
Reply
Alyssa says
March 26, 2012 at 10:13 am

Hi!
I’d love it if you’d stop by and link these up to A Themed Bakers Sunday! The theme this week is anything Citrus!
Hope to see you there!
Cupcakeapothecary.blogspot.com
Reply
Liz says
May 26, 2012 at 11:17 pm

Amazing–made them exactly as the recipe stated and baked them for 8 minutes and they were perfect!
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Sarah @ Miss Candiquik says
March 26, 2013 at 11:22 am

This is seriously my favorite cookie recipe…I could literally eat the entire batch. Made these several times now! Thanks Lauren & Heather!
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- Heather says
  March 27, 2013 at 4:20 am
  
  Sarah- I’m so glad!! Thanks so much for sharing the love…
  kisses // heather
  Reply
Jennifer says
April 26, 2013 at 5:07 pm

YUM!!! I saw this today and went straight to my kitchen and made them for my grandma. She loves lemons!! She said I could leave out some sugar and make them more tart. 🙂 That's my grandma! The person who surprised me was my son. He does NOT like sour… and he loved them!! They are so soft and yummy! This recipe is going into my binder full of favorite recipes. Thank you for posting it!!!
Reply
- Heather says
  April 26, 2013 at 7:44 pm
  
  Oh Jennifer… I’m so excited that you liked them!! They are some of my favorites too!!
  kisses // heather
  Reply
Annie says
September 5, 2014 at 10:49 pm

Really great recipe! I’ve been wanting to try a lemon cookie recipe for a while so I finally made these for my 96 year old grandmother a few days ago. She fell in love with them instantly and Grandpa loves them too! I just made up another quadruple batch of dough for her to keep in the fridge so she can bake a few at a time when she feels like something sweet (the recipe as written is very small). They don’t flatten or crinkle for me though. I started flattening the balls before baking and they are turning out more like the photo but still puffed up in the middle and not crinkly. I also abandoned rolling them in the confectioners sugar (it takes too much time) and instead just dust them with it when they come out of the oven. I also found that baking them on parchment paper works great. You can reuse the paper several times and it makes it so easy for cooling. Just lift the paper with the cookies still on it off of the baking sheet and place the whole thing (paper and cookies) onto a cooling rack to cool. No need to transfer them one by one!
Reply
- Alexis says
  June 2, 2015 at 5:02 pm
  
  This was a great comment! I will try out the parchment paper- it seems very convenient. Also, do you think they would still turn out okay if I didn’t use powdered sugar at all?
  Reply
Haley says
December 13, 2014 at 10:22 am

These cookies are so cute and packed with great lemon flavor!
I was making a bunch of other cookies and had a lot of cream cheese frosting left over, so I just dumped a bunch of lemon juice in it and put it on the cookies and it was great!
Definitely a fun and easy recipe to hold on to!
Reply
some nerd says
September 15, 2015 at 3:08 pm

ok so i made these thrice and once i added fresh mint + like cut open a bag of moroccan mint tea and put it in there and then the second time i used fresh basil and the third time i used like english lavender that was really sick so i def reccomend that
also i had this idea to llike use orange stuff instead of lemon stuff and then throw some earl grey in there so maybe that wont be as good but pretty neat idk im gonna do it today
Reply
Annie says
February 14, 2018 at 10:03 am

Just wanted you to know these are my all time favorite cookies! Thanks so much for posting?
Reply
- Heather says
  February 14, 2018 at 7:21 pm
  
  Thanks so cool Annie! Thanks for sharing!!
  Reply
jannel says
May 12, 2018 at 9:15 am

Do you think these could be frozen after baked and cooled?
Reply
- Heather says
  May 14, 2018 at 1:23 pm
  
  I think they would work great that way. However, none have ever stayed around long enough to freeze 😉
  Reply
Ida says
January 8, 2019 at 9:59 pm

Just wondering about the amount of flour. Is it 1,5 cups of flour, or 0,5-1 cups? Can’t wait to try!
Reply

FAQs

Why are my crinkle cookies not crinkling? ›

Why are my crinkle cookies not crinkling? If the dough is too wet, then it will dissolve the sugar and the crinkle will get lost. In order for a defined crinkle to form, the surface of the dough needs to be dry. If your cookies are not crinkling then there is too much free water in the dough.

What makes a cookie crackle? ›

Coating the cookies with either type of sugar draws out moisture from their surface, promoting cracks by drying out their tops before the interiors set. But granulated sugar does so more efficiently because of its coarse, crystalline structure. As the crystals absorb moisture, some—but not all—dissolve into a syrup.

Get More Info Here ›

Why didn't my crinkle cookies crack? ›

If your crinkles aren't cracking, check that your oven is at the correct temperature and that your leavening agent (baking powder) hasn't expired. Why is my crinkle cookie dough too wet? The cookie dough is expected to be moist, sticky, and formless.

Discover More Details ›

Why are my crinkles not moist? ›

See note above about baking times. The most likely reason that the cookies are not moist is that they've been overbaked. With cookies, overbaking by only a few minutes can be the difference between a perfect cookie and a dry, crumbly one. Another reason could be that they haven't been stored in an airtight container.

Learn More Now ›

How do you keep cookies crunchy? ›

Keep those cookies crisp by storing them in an airtight container. Some people toss a piece of bread in with the cookies to help absorb any excess moisture. You could also re-crisp them by baking on a wire rack in a 300 degree F oven for a few minutes.

Get More Info Here ›

Why don't my cookies come out crispy? ›

To make cookies crispy, add less liquid or bake it in the oven for longer to dry out the dough. Generally bake around 13-15min at 180C for a crispy cookie. But if you want a thoroughly crispy cookie – not those just charred on the outside – decrease the temperature to 140C and bake for 30min.

Read The Full Story ›

Why don't my cookies crackle? ›

Not enough leavening (it needs to be strong enough to crack the top once it's set) Using a single-acting baking powder (double acting gives extra rise when it gets heated) Not creaming the fat long enough (creaming cuts little air pockets into the fat, which means the leavening has to do less work)

Why are my cookies not puffing up? ›

The Problem: The Butter Is Too Soft

Room temperature butter is just the right consistency to incorporate air when it's creamed with sugar. These trapped air pockets result in risen, fluffy cookies. If the butter is any warmer, it won't incorporate enough air and your cookies will have less rise.