Easy Iced Lemon Shortbread Cookies

Easy Iced Lemon Shortbread Cookies are a perfect and bright Spring and Summer treat! With a few simple ingredients, these lemon shortbread cookies with a lemon glaze could not be easier to make!

I’m a lemon lover and I sure do love a delicious lemon cookie. Make that an iced lemon cookie and I’m even happier. If you want to truly go for the gold, give me an iced lemon cookie that is like classic shortbread cookies and a lemon cookie got married and had a baby. That is the best way I know to describe these easy iced lemon cookies. They are so light and delicate they almost melt in your mouth. Easy Iced Lemon Shortbread Cookies are easily on my top 10 list of favorite cookies of all time. Try them as soon as you can. They will not disappoint!

Credit Where Credit is Due!

I want to always give credit where credit is due. This is NOT my own original recipe. I’ve made my own tweaks and twists, but I got the original recipe from one of my favorite food blogs, Saving Room for Dessert, years ago. If nothing else, go look at the food photography on her page. She is insanely talented! These are her Lemon Meltaway Cookies. And in her post, it says she adapted her recipe from Southern Living Magazine. So these cookies have certainly evolved over time!

Ingredients: Easy Iced Lemon Cookies

I love that these cookies have so few ingredients! Chances are you may already have all the necessary items in the house already!

For the Cookies:

• 14 Tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature (not softened butter)
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 2 Tablespoons lemon zest (takes 2-3 lemons)
• 1 T Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

For the Lemon Icing Glaze:

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 4-6 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice (1-2 additional lemons)
• 1-2 teaspoons lemon zest (for garnish if you want)

Recommended Kitchen Products: Easy Iced Lemon Cookies:

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The following are all the items in my kitchen that I used to make these cookies. They all make my kitchen life so much easier every day for all my recipes!

• Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer
• Flex Edge Beater for KitchenAid Tilt-Head Stand Mixer
• Microplane 46020 Premium Classic Series Zester Grater
• Top Rated Zulay Premium Quality Metal Lemon Lime Squeezer – Manual Citrus Press Juicer
• U.S. Kitchen Supply – Set of 4 Premium Quality Fine Mesh Stainless Steel Strainers
• Parchment Paper Baking Sheets, 12×16 Inches Non-Stick Precut Baking Parchment
• AmazonBasics Silicone, Non-Stick, Food Safe Baking Mat
• Wilton Perfect Results Cooling Rack, 3 Tier, Non-Stick
• Nordic Ware Natural Aluminum Commercial Baker’s Half Sheet
• OXO 74391 Good Grips Better Flat Wire Whisk
• Stainless Steel Mixing Bowl Set
• Pyrex Prepware 2-Cup Glass Measuring Cup
• Rubbermaid 2024351 Brilliance Food Storage Container, Large

Instructions: Easy Iced Lemon Cookies

Now it’s time to get down to business! We’ve covered the ingredients! We’ve covered equipment! Now let’s bake!

Step 1:

Zest your lemons and put the zest aside in a small bowl. I use my Microplane grater. You don’t want to scrape off so much zest that you get down to the white pith of the lemon. That doesn’t taste good at all.

Step 2:

Cut lemons in half and squeeze out juice over a bowl. I like to squeeze them over a mesh strainer so I don’t have to worry about the seeds. I go ahead and juice all the lemons at one time, so I can make plenty of icing later.

Step 3:

Put the room-temperature butter into the bowl of your stand mixer and let it beat the butter until it’s creamy.

Step 4:

Add in 1/2 cup powdered sugar and mix on medium speed with butter mixture until all incorporated together.

Step 5:

With the mixer running on low, add 2 Tablespoons lemon zest and 2 Tablespoons lemon juice.

Step 6:

In a separate bowl, sift flour, cornstarch and salt together and stir to combine the dry ingredients.

Step 7:

Add the flour mixture in 3 or 4 additions to the butter mix. I put in a large spoonful, let it totally mix in, then put in another, and so on until all the flour mixture has been added in.

Step 8:

Once the dough is all mixed up, I lay out a piece of plastic wrap on the counter and empty the contents of the mixing bowl onto the wrap.

Step 9:

I wrap the plastic around the dough and squeeze it all together and let it form an even size log (so we can slice and bake the dough when it comes out of the fridge later. I’m not a fan of rolling balls of dough!).

Step 10:

Refrigerate for at least an hour. Overnight is also totally fine.

Step 11:

When it’s time to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 350°.

Step 12:

Line a cookie/baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat.

Step 13:

Slice the cookies off the dough log (Mine makes 24 nicely thick cookies) and place them on the parchment-lined baking sheet. As you can see, I don’t measure! I just keep slicing sections in half until I get to 24 cookies! Give them a little space from each other, though they will not spread a whole lot when baking.

If you really wanted to use a cookie cutter, you can put the dough on a floured surface and roll it out with a rolling pin if you want a prettys shape.

PS – For all you cookie dough lovers… there are no eggs in this dough… sooooooooooooooo, just saying. Having said that – I’m supposed to tell you not to eat raw cookie dough.

Step 14:

Bake for 11-13 minutes or until lightly browned. They will not turn much in color at all, so watch your baking time.

Step 15:

Move cookies to a cooling rack to cool completely before icing.

Step 16:

Put a cooling rack on top of another parchment-lined cookie sheet. This catches the icing drippings so you can use those as well!

Step 17:

To make the icing, or tangy lemon glaze, mix the powdered sugar with 4 Tablespoons of the lemon juice. Add more lemon juice if the mixture is too thick to pour, but do so in very gradual amounts. You don’t want terribly runny icing either.

Step 18:

Pour icing into a container with a pourable spout and pour over the cookies while they are on the cooling rack, to where the dripping icing falls onto the parchment paper.

Step 19:

If you need more icing than what you have in the container, you can simply pull the parchment paper out after a few minutes of dripping, and pour those contents into your container and that will give you enough icing to finish the cookies.

Step 20:

While the icing is still wet, if you want, you can garnish with lemon zest. Allow the icing to fully set then you can store cookies in an airtight container on the kitchen counter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Wrap Up – Easy Iced Lemon Cookies

I hope that you will give these special cookies a try. Delicious lemon shortbread cookies come out perfect every single time and they look so impressive! I love that you can make the dough one day and bake them the next as well. I’m all for any recipe that lets me bake at my own schedule! Easy Iced Lemon Cookies are a crowd pleaser always. Let me know how you like these buttery lemon shortbread cookies. And as always, just keep shuffling!

Related Recipes:

• Lemon Pound Cake
• The Best Easy and Delicious Lemon Recipes
• Cinnamon Sugar Sprinkle Cookies
• The Best Ice Cream Float Recipes

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