Lemon Drop Cookies

Fluffy and light Lemon Drop Cookies are bursting with lemon zest and topped with a lemon glaze. These soft lemon cookies are a perfect holiday treat! Makes 24 cookies.

Love a fluffy cookie recipe? Don’t miss Peppermint Brownie Drop Cookies, Pumpkin Drop Cookies with Browned Butter Icing and Peanut Butter Chocolate White Chocolate Chip Cookies.

In years past, we’ve traveled for Thanksgiving. This year, we went to visit my family, and last year, we headed to Louisiana to visit Winston’s family.

Whenever we travel, we inevitably bring home food-related items from our families.

And these light-as-air, fluffy lemon cookies are a nod to a giant Meyer lemon that Winston’s aunt sent us home with years ago.

Why I love these lemon cookies:

Lemon-flavored desserts were never on the docket when I was growing up (hi, hello, I ate a lot of Peanut Blossoms, Chocolate Crinkle Cookies, All-Butter Tea Cake Cookies and Potato Chip Cookies), but they are absolutely a thing I adore now.

I mean… how could I not love something that’s a little tart and a little sweet in a cookie that’s super soft and delicate? The lemon flavor is subtle, but it’s there, and in my opinion, it is divine.

Other citrusy desserts for the holidays you might like: Orange Cranberry Cream Cheese Thumbprint Cookies / Fig and Lemon Cheesecake Bars / Cranberry Orange Ginger Biscotti / Orange Raspberry Shortbread Cookies | Lemon Cooler Cookies

Need a holiday recipe, but don’t know where to start? I have all kinds of inspiration for you on my Christmas recipe index, including more cookies (like these Peppermint Chocolate Crinkle Cookies), bars (like Cranberry Crumb Bars) and more.

Tools you’ll need to make Lemon Drop Cookies

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• Sheet pan
• Silpat nonstick baking mat
• Stand mixer
• Citrus juicer or citrus reamer
• Zester
• 1 tablespoon cookie scoop
• Fine Mesh Strainer
• Wire cooling rack

In addition to these tools, you’re going to need a few ingredients to make these soft lemon cookies and the lemon glaze, too.

• Unsalted butter—it needs to be softened, so you need to leave it out on the counter for 30-45 minutes before getting started on this recipe. If your house is cold, it’ll take longer.
• Granulated sugar
• Egg
• Vanilla extract
• Milk
• 2-3 lemons—for their zest and their juice
• All-purpose flour—I always use unbleached flour, but regular ‘ol AP flour works here, too!
• Baking powder—to make these cookies so poofy!
• Kosher salt
• Powdered sugar—also known as confectioner’s sugar

How to Make Lemon Drop Cookies

Prepare the pan and oven

Preheat the oven, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Personally, I like the nonstick mat, but parchment paper works, and so does spraying the pan lightly with nonstick cooking spray.

Once your pan is prepared, set it aside.

Make the cookie dough

For these cookies, I like to use a stand mixer, but you can also use a hand mixer if you’ve got a big ‘ol bowl to mix them in.

The first step is creaming together the butter and sugar. This will take about 2-3 minutes, and you really want to mix them together until the butter is a very pale yellow.

Next, break the egg and add it to the bowl. Measure in the vanilla, too, and blend ’em until combined and smooth. This will take another 2-3 minutes, because you want to make sure your ingredients are good and mixed.

Pour in the milk and zest the lemon. This can be done directly over the bowl or done on a cutting board and tossed into the bowl–your call!

Use the mixer to blend the milk and lemon zest into the batter. The Lemon Drop Cookie batter will be super liquidy at this point, so do not fret. I promise it’s supposed to be like this. 😉

Next up, you’ll measure your flour, baking powder and salt into another bowl and whisk them together before gently sprinkling on top of the wet ingredients and incorporating them. Make sure to start slowly on the mixer or flour will fly everywhere!

Stir these ingredients together until just combined, and then stop. If you continue mixing, the cookies will become more tough because the gluten has been overworked.

Use a cookie scoop to measure out the soft lemon cookies. Personally, I like a 1 tablespoon scoop, but you can use a larger one if you’d rather. Just know that your number of cookies will vary based on the size of your scoop.

Be sure to space the cookies about 1″ apart so they have room to expand in the oven, too!

Bake the Lemon Drop Cookies

Once all the cookies have been scooped onto the baking sheet, transfer it into the preheated oven, and bake until the cookies are golden brown.

When the cookies are done cooking, remove them from the oven and transfer ’em to a cooling rack. You will want the cookies completely cooled before drizzling the glaze on ’em. (If they’re not, the glaze will slide right off!)

Make the Lemon Glaze

First and foremost, make sure that your powdered sugar doesn’t have giant lumps in it. I like to measure out my powdered sugar and sprinkle it through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl to ensure there are no lumps (and so that my glaze is smooth.)

This is an extra step, and I know it’s asking for a bit much… so if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to. But if your glaze is lumpy? Well… you should’ve done this and can fix your glaze by throwing it into a blender to smooth it out.

So. Once the powdered sugar is good to go, pour in the freshly squeezed lemon juice, and whisk ’em together.

That. Is. It.

Glaze the Cookies

Once the soft lemon cookies have cooled completely and the lemon glaze has been made, drizzle it on top of the cookies.

Let the glaze harden (1-2 hours tops, depending on how thick it is on top of your cookies), and then store… or enjoy immediately!

Erin’s Easy Entertaining Tips

The holiday season is my favorite time of year for entertaining because I love seeing my friends and I love seeing everything decorated and pretty.

That said, it can also be stressful to entertain this time of year because there is SO MUCH going on.

If you’re hosting friends and want to bake these cookies, I have a few tips and tricks for you that might be helpful:

• Bake the soft lemon cookies 1-2 days in advance. These beauties keep beautifully, so you don’t need to have them fresh out of the oven for friends. Make the lemon glaze the day of and drizzle it on top before guests arrive so they can enjoy the beauty of these while the glaze is still a little sticky. 😉
• Substitution alert: Give them a different citrus spin with lime or orange zest. You can also add lime juice or orange juice to the glaze if you want to go in that direction, too!
• Send guests home with take out boxes. Part of the joy of the holidays for me is sharing, and I love to send my friends home with a box full of cookies at the end of an evening together.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I want to try these lemony cookies?

If you enjoy lemon in a dessert and like a light cookie, these are totally for you! The lemon taste is subtle and sweet without being sour, and the glaze is perfection, too.

How do I make sure that my lemon glaze isn’t lumpy?

I recommend using a fine mesh strainer to sprinkle the powdered sugar through before mixing it with the lemon. If you don’t do this and your glaze has some lumps, you can run it through a blender to smooth it out.

How should I store these Lemon Drop Cookies?

Once the cookies have been cooled and glazed (and the glaze has hardened), you can transfer them into a cookie tin or to a plate. Cover and keep for up to a week.

What are some other lemon desserts I might love?

• Lemon Tea Cakes
• No Bake Sour Cream Lemon Pie
• Easy Lemon Cakes
• Mini Lemon Bundt Cakes

The photos and recipe for these Soft Lemon Cookies were originally published on December 9, 2014. The photographs, along with the text of this blog post, were updated on December 4, 2019.