These Straightforward Sugar Cookies Style Simply Like Sunshine, Due to a 1-Ingredient Improve

Why It Works

Rubbing the lemon zest with sugar helps launch the aromatic oil within the peel, producing a extra sturdy lemon taste within the cookies.
Chilling the cookie dough permits the flour to hydrate, producing cookies with higher construction and a deeper taste.
Freezing the formed cookies briefly earlier than baking helps solidify the fats within the butter, stopping extreme spreading when the cookies are baked.

Together with peppermint, vibrant, zesty lemon is a vital taste of the vacations for me. I sometimes spend Christmas at my mother’s in Louisiana and he or she has a lemon tree in her yard, which suggests her freezer is sort of at all times stocked with frozen lemon juice, prepared for use in her implausible lemon icebox pies and lemon bars. My complete household loves lemon desserts, and this yr I’ve one other candy so as to add to our repertoire: these bright-tasting lemon sugar cookies created by our Birmingham-based take a look at kitchen colleague Jasmine Smith. The cookies are buttery candy, however not cloyingly so like some sugar cookies, because of the punch of vibrant citrus taste.

Critical Eats / Robby Lozano

Most lemon desserts lack daring citrus taste and simply aren’t lemony sufficient—however Jasmine solves that situation by utilizing lemon juice and zest within the cookie dough, and incorporating the citrus juice into the glaze that tops the cookies, which she then garnishes with much more zest. To additional improve the fruit’s taste, she rubs the zest with sugar, which helps draw out the rind’s oils, releasing their vibrant, citrusy taste and aroma. (It is a trick we make use of in a number of our recipes, together with Genevieve‘s lemon curd and Daniel‘s spicy chile lemonade.) She additionally rolls the cookie dough log in among the lemon zest–sugar combination earlier than slicing and baking, which supplies the cookie edges a beautiful lemony crunch. Since you’ll use juice and zest in a number of phases on this recipe, I like to recommend beginning by zesting and juicing all of the lemons referred to as for. When you have juice or zest leftover, simply use it to make one thing else (this easy lemon French dressing, for instance).

One other tried-and true baking approach Jasmine employs in these tender, citrusy cookies is refrigerating the dough after rolling it into logs. Refrigerating the dough permits the flour to totally hydrate, which supplies the ultimate cookies higher construction. Holding the dough chilly additionally helps preserve the cookies from spreading within the oven. In the meantime, because the dough rests, enzymes break down giant carbohydrates, which in flip produces extra flavorful cookies, as former Critical Eats culinary director and science nerd Kenji notes in his chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Critical Eats / Robby Lozano

After resting within the fridge, the cookies are sliced and positioned on a baking sheet, then transferred to the freezer for a fast chill. This time within the freezer helps stop the cookies from spreading an excessive amount of as they bake and produces good, neat round cookies.

For a closing flourish after baking, you will unfold the cookies with a easy glaze of powdered sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla, then prime them with further lemon zest. It is a simple, tangy, and good wanting cookie that might be welcome at a vacation cookie swap or occasion. Personally, I can simply image a plate of them alongside a cup of tea in my mother’s yard on a sunny day in South Louisiana.

Editor’s Notice

This recipe was developed by Jasmine Smith. The headnote was written by Megan O. Steintrager.