Lemon Ice Cookies
on Dec 12, 2014, Updated Apr 28, 2021
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Lemon ice cookies are a must make for your Christmas cookie exchange. Easy and delicious, these are one of our favorite lemon recipes with our readers.
If ever there was one, it is high cookie season here in the U.S. My sister gave me a jingle tonight, calling all the way from Florida to ask if I could help her with recalling some of the cookies that our that our mom would routinely make for the holiday season, decades ago. Happily, I was able to come up with a few to joggle her memory. Ironically, while she called to ask about old favorites, I was in the midst of creating a new one.
Earlier that day, I had found a recipe for some Anginetti lemon cookies. Lucky for me, it was one of the worst written recipes I had ever tried to follow. Admittedly, I had not reviewed the alleged recipe in its entirety prior to mixing the first few ingredients. As I progressed with the formula, I noticed there was additional butter, more eggs, more flour and more sugar to be added. It was as if someone had taken various written components and mixed them up in a bowl prior to transcribing the recipe.
At first I was dismayed and thought to myself, “Well, these are going to be a disaster.” It was probably less than a minute that my inner voice, fueled no doubt by my insatiable appetite for cookies kicked in and said to me, “Let’s see what you can do with these.”
Some people are very good at following their instinct, at recognizing and listening to their inner voice. I’m still working on that skill but over the years I think I have gotten better at it. These cookies, although minor in importance in the grand scheme of things, are nonetheless an example of something wonderful that can be the result of not giving up. I loved these cookies for their texture, for their aroma, and for their flavor.
All that aside, I loved these lemon cookies because I had never tasted anything quite like them before and because of them I have a new found confidence in creating something original, something delicious, and something I can pass on to you. Learn to listen to your inner voice. You just might be amazed at the results. Happy holidays to all. -Dan
Other delicious cookie recipes
- Pecan Sandies
- S’more Cookies
- 3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies
- Bing Cherry and Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Reese’s Pieces Peanut Butter Cookies
Lemon Ice Cookies
Ingredients
for the cookies
- 3 cups 375g powdered sugar, sifted
- 6 tablespoons 90g butter, softened
- juice from 1 lemon
- zest from 1 lemon
- 3 eggs, 150g, beaten
- 1 teaspoon 5mlvanilla
- 2 teaspoons 10g baking powder
- 1 teaspoon 7g baking soda
- 2 3/4 cups 330g all-purpose flour
for the icing
- 1 tablespoon 15g butter
- juice from 1 lemon
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 to 3/4 cups 60-90g powdered sugar
- zest from 1 lemon
Instructions
for the cookies
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Line baking sheet with parchment paper
- Using large mixing bowl, combine powdered sugar and butter. Use electric mixer to cream together.
- Add lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla and mix until well blended.
- Add eggs one at a time and beat on low speed until thoroughly mixed.
- In separate smaller bowl, combine flour, baking powder and baking soda and stir with fork.
- Gradually add dry ingredients to egg mixture and beat with mixer until just blended, use a soft spatula to scrape sides and bottom of bowl to ensure thorough mixing.
- Drop by tablespoon onto parchment paper line baking sheet.
- Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until cookies are light golden in color and set.
- Use hard spatula to remove from baking sheet and place on cooling rack.
for the icing
- Using small sautée pan, heat butter, lemon juice, and vanilla over low heat.
- Gradually stir in powdered sugar to desired consistency.
- Use pastry brush to apply icing to tops of cookies.
- Garnish with lemon zest
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Hi, I just made these and they are very tasty, however, they look nothing like your pictures. Mine turned out flat like a sugar cookie, and rather crisp. I much prefer thick, chewy cookies and wonder what went wrong. The dough was rather runny also, not like cookie dough should be. Any advice?
Hi Rachel. I’m sorry these cookies didn’t turn out the way you had hoped. Based on what your are describing, it sounds like there needed to be more flour in the dough, especially because it appeared on the runny side. Also, make sure your baking soda and baking powder are not old. They lose their ability to make things rise, with age. We had to modify this recipe from the original source and what I would encourage you to do is to use this recipe as written as a base, and then make whatever adjustments (with flour) that are necessary to achieve what you think is a normal cookie dough consistency. Sometimes we will put a “test” cookie in the oven to see if changes in the dough need to be made. Humidity, altitude, oven variation and a host of other variables can affect the composition of dough. If the dough appears to runny, add a little flour. If it seems too dry, maybe add a little milk to get it where you think it needs to be. I hope you can make this recipe work, it makes wonderful cookies. Thanks for reading Platter Talk, we always appreciate hearing from people!
Lemon is one of my favorite flavors for the holidays. These look and sound delicious – pinning them. Thank you for sharing at Share It One More Time. Cathy
Cookies with the freshness of lemon! What a treat!
These cookies are gorgeous and have me wanting to rush to the kitchen to make some. We love lemon cookies!
Thanks, Cindy. I have to admit that I had a very hard time staying away from these. OK, I failed miserably in that endeavor…
I’ve had that problem with recipes before. I was trying to make a cake last month, and the first instruction was “mix all the dry ingredients.” So I did. Then several steps in, it says to add the sugar. Um… sugar isn’t a dry ingredient??? Luckily it didn’t effect the outcome of the cake, but I thought the instructions should have been clearer. I’d never seen one where dry ingredients didn’t mean literally all the DRY ingredients.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some Lemon Ice Cookies to make, since I just so happen to have everything on hand. Thank you for persevering so the rest of us can have a recipe we can actually follow!
HA! Thanks for the feed back and the smile, Stephanie. Both are so appreciated!
Well intuition is one of the greatest gifts we have and following yours led to a super cookie recipe.
Thanks Patty!
G’day great photos and cookies Dan
Cheers! Joanne pinned
Oh my, I adore lemon, these look so good Dan A must try!
Thanks Bunny; you’ll love these!
It looks like your inner voice steered you well. I, for one, am terrible at following recipes and almost always change them up. These, however, look amazing and sound wonderful. I want to add this to our list of Christmas cookies.
Thanks for the kind comments, Michele, so nice to hear from you.
Beautiful. Going to find some time to bake up a batch of these this weekend!
Thanks, Renée!