Lemon Burst Crinkle Cookies

Here’s something you should know about me: I am lemon obsessed. Truly! I drink a cup of ginger tea with turmeric and lemon every morning, followed up with a HUGE glass of water that I squeeze the rest of that tea lemon into. So it’s probably no surprise that as I’ve been in the mood to experiment in the kitchen, I baked these lemon burst crinkle cookies. Simple, sweet, and absolutely bursting with flavor.

I always know when I have a winner when my husband tries a new cookie recipe and gives me a thumbs up. Ha. These lemon burst crinkle cookies are thumbs up-from-the-husband approved. 🙂

You make the dough and then chill it for an hour (up to overnight), so these are fun to make ahead if you already know you’ll be in the mood for cookies tomorrow.

I also love the process of dividing up the dough, rolling into balls, and then rolling in a small bowl of powdered sugar. It’s like a fun little Play-Doh project before baking a batch of cookies. So this could be a fun one to do with kiddos too.

These are soft on the inside with a little crinkle crunch on the outside. If you like lemon even half as much as me, give these a try! Happy baking, Emma

4.67 from 6 votes
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Lemon Burst Crinkle Cookies

Servings 12 cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil
  • 1 egg + 1 egg yolk
  • 1 lemon zest and 2 tablespoons of juice
  • 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 cup powdered sugar

Instructions

  1. In a large bowl, stir together the granulated sugar, oil, and eggs. Use a box grater to zest as much of the lemon peel as you can, and then reserve 2 tablespoons of lemon juice (or as much as you can). Stir the zest and juice into the bowl.

  2. Then, stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt until a dough ball forms. Cover and chill for at least one hour or overnight.

  3. Divide into 12 balls and roll in powdered sugar. Place on a prepared baking sheet and bake at 350°F for 12-14 minutes until the edges just begin to brown. Remove to a cooling rack and allow to cool.

Recipe Notes

You can use olive oil or other oils you may have on hand. Just keep in mind if you use an oil with a heavy taste or color, it may slightly change the final color and taste of your cookies. These cookies will naturally turn out yellow mostly from the egg yolks and lemon zest, but if you want to bump up the yellow color more you can add a little food dye to the wet ingredients (before stirring in the flour, baking powder, and salt).

Credits // Author and Photography: Emma Chapman. Photos edited with A Color Story Desktop.
  • Love the look of these cookies! Just some small feedback: I totally see the need for ad’s, but it makes it so hard to both read and screenshot the recipe for later. I counted a total of 8 ad’s on this post alone..

    • Thanks for the feedback! We really do always appreciate hearing about the experience of our site from readers—it helps us evaluate things.

      One tip! If click the “print” button (also has a printer icon by it) on the recipe card you can print or screen shot that screen and it does not have ads. This is usually what I do on other food blogs because it also condenses the text so your more likely to get it all in one screen shot / page.

      • Thank you, I had not tried that before! Worked a treat! Will definitely do that in future. Happy Easter😊

  • These look so good! Do you think I could use olive oil? (It’s all we have at home right now) Thanks!

  • Hi Emma,

    It looks delcious. Just a quick question: 11 cups is around 1kg 300g of flour. Is this right? Thanks.

    Best,
    Maria

  • I’m excited to make these today! They look so good! This may be a silly question, but when you say “1 egg + egg yolk” do you mean 1 whole egg or 1 egg and 1 additional egg yolk (whites removed)? I’ve never seen it written like that in a recipe before.

  • Hi, I love lemon, so this is perfect! But I currently don’t have any all purpose flour, so what substitute can I use? Thanks so much!

  • I did it today but it does not look at all like the one in the picture. They look like some fluffy cookies. Even the dough was different and I left it 2 hours in the fridge. Quite disappointed 🙁

  • Hi! So I didin’t quite understand if I let the dought chill for only one hour or the whole night..

  • Where it says ” reserve 2 tablespoons of lemon juice (or as much as you can)” I foolishly interpreted it as ‘if you have more, use that’s and tipped the juice of the whole lemon in. This results in a (very tasty) batter, so I added 1/2 cup of extra flour (still not at dough ball level, but better and I don’t want the cookies to be too dry, your cookie pictures look so deliciously moist inside). The whole thing is now in the fridge until tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

  • I’m making these right now and I followed the recipe to a T – and yet my batter is very wet and not like your solid dough at all! Wondering what went wrong – I’ll let you know how they came out!

    • This happened to me to! How did the cookie turn out with the 1/2 cup extra ?

  • What is all-purpose flour? I am in Australia and we do not have all-purpose flour. We have plain flour and self-raising flour. Is all-purpose flour the same as self-raising flour?

    • Just doing these now. All purpose is plain flour. My batter is very wet too… added some cornflour, fingers crossed.

  • Love this recipe! The cookies turned out great but just wondering if anyone has tried to make these with a plant-based substitute for the eggs?

  • Love this recipe…worst baker in the world and they came out fab!!! Thank you!

  • These look delicious! Do you think butter could be used instead of oil? I’d like to be able to make extra and freeze the dough for others to bake.

  • 4 stars
    These were delicious! I like how they had the flavor of a lemon bar while retaining the texture of a chewy cookie!

  • These were a total bust for me!!! Not sure what happened or if the recipe is incorrect but mine never formed a ball and came out like pancakes, but tasted ok. Would love to know if this happened to anyone else who tried.

  • 5 stars
    I really love this post.
    Although i dont like eggs so how can i make this recipe work without the eggs?

  • 5 stars
    I too had to add almost an extra half cup of flour to get a dough. Plus, I didn’t have a useable lemon, so I used mandarin oranges. The dough tastes delicious, so I assume the cookies will also. (

  • The recipe would be better in ounces or grams- it,s obvious from all of the comments that ‘cups’ are too vague

  • 4 stars
    I chilled it for just 1 hour and they came out super flat not like in the picture but they were still good. Will chill overnight next time.

  • 5 stars
    The kids and I made these with Meyer lemons as a social distancing baking distraction and they turned out great! Thank you for the wonderful recipe!!

  • 5 stars
    This is an awesome recipe, They are a real hit in our lockdown bubble. Can’t thank you enough!

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