Soft Lemon Cookies Recipe: Baking a Chewy Lemon Cookie

Soft lemon cookies have a light, soft, and chewy texture. To achieve the lemony flavor, a lemon cookie dough recipe might call for lemon juice, lemon zest, lemon extract, or all three. Like other cookie recipes, lemon cookies can be thin and crispy or thick and chewy.

As with other lemon desserts, such as lemon bars and lemon cake, soft lemon cookies are sweet and tangy. Add more lemon flavor by including a lemon glaze or more sweetness by rolling the cookie dough balls in powdered sugar (for lemon crinkle cookies).

Every step of the cookie-making process determines the final texture of the cookie, from mixing the dough to baking the cookies. Follow the five tips below to make soft and chewy lemon cookies from scratch:

1. 1. Add an extra egg yolk to the cookie dough. The fat content in egg yolks helps create a chewy and soft cookie. Instead of adding two large eggs to a recipe, try adding one whole egg and one egg yolk. Alternatively, add two whole large eggs and one additional egg yolk.
2. 2. Add more baking powder than baking soda. To encourage the cookies to rise, use more baking powder than baking soda, which encourages the cookies to spread out, creating a thinner and crispier cookie. To prevent an overly cakey cookie, most cookie recipes call for both baking soda and baking powder.
3. 3. Create a lot of air in the mixing process. Beat the butter, sugar, and eggs in a stand mixer for about ten minutes to incorporate air and create a light and fluffy cookie dough. Most of the texture of the cookie is a result of beating the wet ingredients. Once the dry ingredients go into the cookie dough, mix minimally to prevent gluten development, resulting in a tough cookie.
4. 4. Use cornstarch in the cookie dough. One of the dry ingredients that goes into cookie dough, cornstarch binds to the wet ingredients and prevents the cookies from spreading too much.
5. 5. Use more brown sugar than white sugar. The molasses in brown sugar gives baked goods a naturally chewier texture than just granulated sugar does. Chocolate chip cookies, for example, contain both brown sugar and white sugar, resulting in a chewy interior and crispy edges.