This weekend, we attended a birthday barbecue and because I’ll take any chance I can get to bake, I offered to bring a dessert! I knew right away that I wanted to do cookies as a opposed to cupcakes/bars since I figured there would be cake at the party. Plus, I know that not everyone likes cake (although clearly those people are crazy because cake is delicious) and so I thought that cookies would be a good alternative dessert option. With Memorial Day weekend being the unofficial kick-off to summer, I wanted to do something fresh and bright so lemon seemed like the perfect flavor choice!
I had pinned this recipe for lemon sugar cookies recently and thought this would be a great time to try it out as frosted sugar cookies are a personal favorite of mine. I actually ended up using different cookie/frosting recipes from my original pin (mainly because the pin called for cake flour and I didn’t have any on hand), but I was really happy with the end result. The cookies soft and chewy (I’d suggest underbaking them slightly, they keep better!) and the tangy frosting was the perfect addition. They were sweet (but not too sweet) and lemony (but not too lemony) and everyone seemed to love them!
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
I knew that I wanted to do frosted sugar cookies, so I modified the frosting from this recipe slightly to whip up some lemon buttercream to go on top of my cookies:
The original frosting recipe called for both lemon zest and lemon juice, but I thought the frosting seemed way too stiff, so I opted to leave out the zest and just add more juice. This definitely makes the frosting fairly tart, but because the lemon flavor in the cookies is a little more subtle I thought they could handle it! I think lemon is such a perfect flavor for a summer dessert, and these cookies seemed to be a big hit at the barbecue. Definitely give them a try for your next get together! Xoxo