What’s to Love about these Lemon Poppy Seed Cookies
Authentic flavor. My recipe uses 100% REAL lemons to get a fresh, tart, and real lemon flavor. That’s right, no extract, no pudding mixes, no emulsions, just the real-deal that you can actually taste. Quick & easy. The recipe is simple and straightforward with only 30 minutes of chilling required. Make ahead options. The dough can be made up to 3 days in advance. Impressive on any dessert table. With their bright lemon-yellow color (which, ahem, I’ll mention again is totally authentic and from the lemons — no food coloring!) and delicate poppyseed freckles, they’re so pretty and perfect for spring or summer!
There’s something delightfully unique about the combo of bright lemon flavor and crisp poppy seeds. If you’ve enjoyed my lemon poppy seed muffins or scones, you’re in for a treat! Lemon poppy seed cookies have the same bright and sunny flavor, but in soft (really, really soft!) and chewy cookie form. It was very important to me that these cookies have a beautiful lemon flavor without the need for extract or artificial flavors. Also important that they NOT be cakey. If you’ve followed my pumpkin cookie or banana cookie saga, you know that adding moisture (there in the form of pumpkin or banana, here in the form of lemon juice) can quickly turn a soft cookie into a cakey one. I took some very deliberate steps with today’s recipe to ensure it had all the characteristics of a good, chewy cookie, starting with the ingredients.
What You Need
Since we aren’t using any fancy flavors or extracts here, you will likely have all of these ingredients on hand already. Don’t you love when that happens?!
Softened butter. I use unsalted butter and add salt myself, but you can just use salted butter and skip the additional salt. I have an entire post on why I use unsalted butter vs. salted butter, in case you’d like to understand the reasoning behind that choice. Lemons. We will use fresh lemon zest and juice (fresh lemon juice is essential here!) for maximum lemon flavor. Always zest your lemons before juicing, and make sure you don’t zest so far that you reach the bitter white pith–we only want the thin yellow skin! I find I typically need about two lemons for this recipe. Make sure they’re fresh, not ones where the skin is thin and drying from sitting on your counter too long. Egg yolks. To reduce excess moisture in the dough, especially since we are adding lemon juice, I decided to skip the egg whites and use only egg yolks (which also felt like an appropriate nod toward lemon curd, which only uses egg yolks, too). This gives our cookies a gorgeous yellow color as well. You can save your egg whites for meringue cookies, pavlova, or macarons. Poppy seeds. An essential ingredient! Not only do poppy seeds add a nice crunch to these cookies, they add fun a visual element too. Some people like to soak their poppyseeds before baking, but I don’t find it necessary. I talk more about this below.
Now what you don’t need: vanilla extract! The omission of vanilla extract from this recipe was absolutely intentional. Unfortunately, it strongly subdued the fresh lemon flavor, ironically making the cookies more bland! While I’m personally a vanilla fan, we’ll skip it here. SAM’S TIP: There are so many ways to zest a lemon, but my favorite method for this recipe is to use a microplane. Here’s a guide on how to zest a lemon with several different tools, in case you need a refresher! Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Lemon Poppy Seed Cookies
Cookie Dough
We’ll start by beating a healthy amount of lemon zest into butter and sugar. This step brings out the oils of the lemon zest and emulsifies every bit of lemon flavor into the dough, just like in my lemon cookies. We’ll add a bit of fresh lemon juice too, just for good measure. And yes, it has to be freshly squeezed!
Lemon Glaze
The cherry on top, this glaze is bursting with flavor. Don’t skip it! SAM’S TIP: Stop baking your cookies when the edges are just starting to turn a light golden brown for soft and chewy results. The centers may still look a little underdone, but they will continue cooking on the baking sheet outside the oven. These cookies would be so fun at a tea party or spring baby shower! Enjoy! Let’s bake together! I’ll be walking you through all the steps in my written recipe and video below! If you try this recipe, be sure to tag me on Instagram, and you can also find me on YouTube and Facebook
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