These lemon coolers are a perfect treat throughout the year! If you love the tartness of lemon and the sweetness of cookies, then you'll definitely love these lemon coolers! They're light, refreshing, and easy to make. Plus, it is perfect for an afternoon pick-me-up or an after-dinner dessert. So get out your mixing bowl - it's time to bake up a batch of these delicious cookies!
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💭 Why you'll love this recipe
- A perfect balance of flavors. These cookies are the perfect balance of tart and sweet. The lemon flavor is intense, but it's offset by the sweetness of the powdered sugar coating (just like these lemon curd thumbprint cookies)
- Perfectly melts in your mouth. These cookies are so soft and delicate that they literally melt in your mouth.
- Easy to make. This recipe just needs a handful of pantry-friendly ingredients!
📋 Ingredients and notes
To make these lemon coolers, you need butter, granulated sugar, egg yolk, baking powder, salt, vanilla extract, cornstarch, all-purpose flour, fresh lemon juice, fresh lemon zest, and powdered sugar.
P.S., you can make powdered sugar by just blitzing granulated sugar in a powerful blender.
Notes and Variations
- Substitute all-purpose flour. While all-purpose flour is ideal, you can use cake flour in a pinch. Just know that your cookies will be more tender because cake flour has a lower protein content. You can also use a 1:1 gluten-free baking mix (like this one) and retain the flavor and texture of the cookies.
- Choice of butter. If you want to make this dish dairy-free, vegan butter is a great substitute for regular butter. I have used both salted butter and unsalted butter in this recipe, and they both taste great.
- Other toppings: You can take these lemon coolers up a notch by adding white chocolate chips or candied lemon to the dough, or brushing them with a lemon glaze!
- Other Lemon Substitute. Meyer lemons are great for this recipe, just keep in mind that they have a strong lemon flavor and can be a bit flowery. A lime can also work well as a substitute as it gives the lemon coolers a great tart taste. You can also skip lemons and use lemon-flavoring (e.g., KoolAid, etc.)
P.S., If you are looking for some vegan cookies instead, check out my awesome list of vegan cookies!
📖 How to make lemon coolers
To bake lemon coolers, preheat the oven to 350°F for 10 minutes and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cut butter into small cubes.
Cream together the vanilla, salt, fresh lemon zest, granulated sugar, and butter in a large bowl. You want to get a nice mixture without any lumps. It's important that the butter is not too warm or too cold for this reason. Mix together with a hand mixer or an electric mixer until all the ingredients are well integrated. You can also just use a spatula, but you'll need some elbow juice!
Add the fresh lemon juice and egg yolk and keep mixing for another two minutes or until they integrate.
In another bowl, combine the remaining dry ingredients: baking powder, cornstarch, and flour until they are fully integrated. If you don't want to do this step, you can also add the dry ingredients to a sieve, and just sift them into the wet ingredients.
Combine the dry mixture with the wet butter mixture and integrate both until a smooth dough forms. You can do this step using your hands or a spatula. Now take the dough to the fridge for about 1 hour. Don’t skip this step as it will make it easier to scoop later!
Scoop 1 heaping teaspoon of dough and shape it into a ball (it will spread a bit on the oven), then place it on the baking sheet and do the same with the rest of the dough. Leave 2 inches between each ball.
Bake for about 10-12 minutes or until they start to get brown on the edges. We don’t want them to look golden brown but they don’t have to look raw either. Just a little puffy in the center.
Let the cookies sit on a cooling rack. Then toss each cookie in powdered sugar. Enjoy your lemon coolers!
👩🏽🍳Top Tips to Make the Best Lemon Coolers
The lemon coolers are perfect for any occasion. Sweet, tart, zesty, acidic - follow six tips and you'll be on your way to cookie perfection!
- Use real lemons and zest. This tip is two-fold. Using real lemons (versus bottled juice) helps release all of the flavorful oils in the lemon skin which makes for a more intense lemon flavor in your cookies, while lemon zest will give your cookies an extra zing that will have people coming back for more.
- Use room temperature ingredients. Bringing eggs and butter to room temperature will ensure that the dough mixes evenly! Take the butter out at least an hour before you're about to make the dough. If you forget, no worries! Microwave some water in a glass, dump the water out and then place the glass upside down over the stick of butter. This will help soften the butter!
- Don’t overmix the dough. Over-mixing develops the gluten in the flour, which can result in dry cookies!
- Don't over-bake them. Make sure to take them out of the oven while they're still nice and soft in the center. They may look slightly underdone but trust me, they'll continue to bake as they cool on the baking sheet!
- Let them cool completely before fingerprinting them with powdered sugar. Just wait until they're completely cooled before running a sifter filled with powdered sugar over the top of them so you don't end up with clumps of sugar in your final product.
- Chill the dough! Chilling the dough will ensure that cookies don't spread out too much. After making cookie dough, cover with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for a few hours, if you can.
👩🏽🍳Troubleshooting FAQs
Lemon coolers were a cookie made by a company called Sunshine Biscuits.This company eventually merged with Keebler in the 1990s. You can still buy Memaw’s Original Recipe Lemon Coolers from some stores, or you can just make them using my recipe so you can eat them anytime!
These lemon coolers will stay fresh in the fridge for up to 5 days or 2-3 months if stored in the freezer. Just make sure to put them into an airtight container before storing them.
It's likely that your butter is too warm or the dough is not chilled enough.
To avoid this, make sure that you remove your butter from the fridge about an hour before making the cookie, and also make sure to chill your dough at least 30 minutes to an hour before shaping the cookies!
Look, I'm all about convenience, but this is one instance where chilling the dough is critical to make sure that the cookies don't spread too much. Secondly, chilled dough is just easier to work with (so they won't stick to your hands!)
🍴 Serving and storage suggestions
If you store them in an airtight container, they will remain delicious for 5 days. But let's be honest, they're probably going to be eaten within the day.
Unbaked lemon coolers can be stored in the freezer for 3 months by simply wrapping them in plastic wrap and placing them in freezer-safe containers. Before serving simply let them defrost overnight, and proceed with baking instructions!
Baked lemon coolers can be frozen too! First, let them cool completely after baking, Then, put them in freezer-safe containers - this will keep them fresh for up to 2 months! When you're ready to eat the cookies, defrost them at room temperature and enjoy serving them with your favorite beverage!
If you want to try more exciting cookies, make sure to check these out:
Did you make this recipe?! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Please leave a comment and a star rating and let me know how it went! We love hearing from you, thank you so much
📖 Recipe
Lemon Coolers
Equipment
- 1 Hand Mixer optional
Ingredients
- ½ cup butter
- ⅓ cup granulated sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ⅓ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1⅓ cups all purpose flour, (160g)
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- ½ tablespoon lemon zest
- 1 cup powdered sugar
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F for 10 minutes and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Cut butter into cubes. Then, cream together the vanilla, salt, lemon zest, granulated sugar, and butter in a large bowl. Mix together with a hand mixer or an electric mixer until all the ingredients are well integrated.
- Add the lemon juice and egg yolk and keep mixing for another two minutes or until they integrate.
- In another bowl, combine the remaining dry ingredients: baking powder, cornstarch, and flour until they are fully integrated.
- Combine the dry mixture with the wet butter mixture and integrate both until a smooth dough forms. You can do this step using your hands or a spatula. Now take the dough to the fridge for about 1 hour. Don’t skip this step as it will make it easier to scoop later.
- Scoop 1 heaping teaspoon of dough and shape it into a ball (it will spread a bit on the oven), then place it on the baking sheet and do the same with the rest of the dough. Leave 2 inches between each ball.
- Bake for about 10-12 minutes or until they start to get brown on the edges. We don’t want them to look golden brown but they don’t have to look raw either. Just a little puffy on the center.
- Let the cookies sit on a cooling rack. Then toss each cookie in powdered sugar. Serve and enjoy!
Notes
- Use room temperature ingredients. Bringing eggs and butter to room temperature will ensure that the dough mixes evenly! Take the butter out at least an hour before you're about to make the dough. If you forget, no worries! Microwave some water in a glass, dump the water out and then place the glass upside down over the stick of butter. This will help soften the butter!
- Don’t overmix the dough. Over-mixing develops the gluten in the flour, which can result in dry cookies!
- Chill the dough! Chilling the dough will ensure that cookies don't spread out too much. After making cookie dough, cover with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for a few hours, if you can
- Don't over-bake the cookies. Make sure to take them out of the oven while they're still nice and soft in the center. They may look slightly underdone but trust me, they'll continue to bake as they cool on the baking sheet!
- Let them cool completely before dusting them with powdered sugar.
These were delicious! I love how they just melt away in your mouth.
Loved all the lemon flavor bursting through these cookies. Devoured!
So refreshing with the perfect amount of sweetness. DELISH!
I think these lemon coolers are perfect for a summer treat! We had these yesterday and they were so delicious and refreshing, a crowd favorite! Excited to make them again!
OH. MY. GOD. These lemon coolers were the best I've EVER tried!