Lemon Shortbread Cookies (Flavorful!) – Sally’s Baking Addiction

Tangy-sweet and buttery, these cut-out lemon shortbread cookies are a ray of sunshine on a plate. The texture strikes a wonderful balance of crumbly, crunchy, soft, and tender. Roll out the dough and cut into your choice of shapes. Enjoy plain, topped with sparkling sugar, or dipped in an easy lemon icing that sets.

Among all the holiday cookies, from spiced (molasses cookies) to rich (crinkle cookies) to sweet (Christmas sugar cookies), it’s so refreshing to have a burst of citrus in the mix.

It’s why I love these lemon crinkle cookies and these cranberry orange icebox cookies at the holidays. (Though of course you can—and should!—make these sunny lemon treats year round!!)

Lemon Shortbread Cookies Recipe Snapshot

Taste: Like all shortbread cookies, the flavor is buttery and not overly sweet. Using fresh lemon zest and juice in these cookies gives them pure lemon flavor.
Texture: Because shortbread does not require leavener or egg, the texture is uniquely crisp, yet soft and tender. This is an egg-free baking recipe.
Ease: You only need 7 basic ingredients to make the dough. An electric mixer, a rolling pin, and cookie cutters are the main tools to have on hand. A food processor, blender, or mini chopper is key for combining the sugar and lemon zest.
Time: The soft dough needs to chill for 3 hours before you can cut it into shapes and bake the cookies.

overhead photo of lemon shortbread with icing and lemon zest.

Some of my favorite shortbread recipes include these shortbread wedge cookies (customizable with different add-ins); sweet & salty chocolate pistachio shortbread; and slice-and-bake-style pecan shortbread & brown sugar shortbread. Today’s recipe is practically the same as my beloved shortbread cookies, which are baked in round cake pans.

For today’s version, we are flavoring it with oodles of lemon and cutting it into shapes with cookie cutters, just like we do with sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies.

7-Ingredient Lemon Shortbread Cookie Dough:

ingredients on marble surface including butter, flour, vanilla, sugar, and cornstarch.

Traditional shortbread recipes are made with a 3-2-1 ratio: 3 parts flour, 2 parts butter, and 1 part sugar. Sometimes there’s vanilla and salt, too, but there’s no egg and no leavening agent. As I have tested many, many shortbread cookie recipes over the years, I’ve played around a lot with the ingredients, so you’ll notice the ratio I use is not the exact 3-2-1 of traditional shortbread.

Here’s what you need for this lemon shortbread recipe:

Granulated Sugar: You’ll start by pulsing the sugar together with the lemon zest in a food processor, which breaks it down into a finer texture and helps infuse more flavor into the dough.
Lemons: You need 2 fresh lemons for this shortbread recipe—we are using both the zest and the juice.
Unsalted Butter: As the base of nearly all shortbread recipes, butter supplies these classic cookies with flavor, and gives them that uniquely buttery, melt-in-your-mouth quality. Make sure you use room-temperature butter that’s still cool to the touch. If it’s too warm, the butter and sugar cannot properly cream and the cookies will overspread and taste dense.
Vanilla Extract: We’re using less than in these regular shortbread wedge cookies, because we want the lemon flavor to shine through.
Flour: All-purpose flour provides structure and produces sturdy, yet terrifically tender shortbread cookies.
Cornstarch: Cornstarch really is the “secret” to texture success here. It keeps the cookies extra soft, tender, and light, just like it does in peppermint meltaway cookies. I love adding a small amount to chocolate chip cookies too.
Salt: A pinch of salt keeps the flavor balanced.

How to Make Cut-Out Shortbread Cookies

Start by pulsing the sugar and lemon zest together in a food processor. (I use and love this one.) This step at the beginning is key to these lemon shortbread cookies, because it 1) breaks down the sugar granules and lemon zest into a finer consistency, 2) extracts some of the oil from the lemon peel, which moistens the sugar, and 3) infuses more flavor into the dough because it is then creamed with butter (fat carries flavor).

Beautifully infused lemon sugar:

lemon sugar in food processor and shown again up close on a spoon.

Once you have your lemon sugar, from here on you’re making an easy 1-bowl cookie dough. Cream the butter and lemon sugar together, and then add the lemon juice and vanilla.

Finally, mix in the dry ingredients. Beat on low speed to begin bringing all of the ingredients together. The dough will be crumbly at first, but then clump up as you increase the mixer speed.

Roll Out the Dough Before Chilling

This is the same order of steps as my sugar cookies recipe, and we do it this way because after chilling, the dough will be quite stiff and much more difficult to roll out.

With a floured rolling pin, roll out the soft dough onto a floured piece of parchment paper or silicone baking mat. We want to keep these shortbread cookies on the thicker side, so don’t roll it too thin. Just under 1/2 an inch is great.

Pick up the parchment/baking mat with the rolled-out dough on it and place the whole thing on a baking sheet and refrigerate it. This dough needs to chill for at least 3 hours before you cut it into shapes and bake it.

The number of cookies you get out of this dough will depend on the size of your cookie cutters. The cookie cutter I used here is 2.25 inches in diameter, and I was able to get 38 cookies after re-rolling the scraps. I use a fluted-edge cookie cutter from this set.

Use a fork to gently poke indents (not holes, don’t push all the way through) in the tops of the cookies before baking. Why? This is really just for looks! Feel free to skip, especially if you plan to cover them in icing.

rolled out cookie dough cut into scallop-edged circles and shown again on parchment paper with fork holes poked on top.

Optional Toppings

These lemon shortbread cookies taste great as is, but you’ll especially love them topped with a creamy, dreamy lemon icing. You can simply dip the tops of the cooled cookies in it—no piping bags or tips required. If you want to pipe intricate designs on the cookies, use royal icing and see my how to decorate sugar cookies tutorial for inspiration. You could also use cookie decorating buttercream, or lemon buttercream. See frosting recipes for more options.

A sprinkle of fresh lemon zest over the icing adds a little extra zing and is the perfect finishing touch on the iced cookies. The icing sets after about 1 to 2 hours, or you can speed it up a little by placing the iced cookies in the refrigerator.

OR… if you don’t plan to ice these cookies, you can add a sprinkle of coarse sugar or sanding sugar sprinkles before baking, which gives the shortbread a sparkly crunch. I usually reach for white sparkling sugar sold as sprinkles in the baking aisle.

hand dipping shortbread cookies in icing.

lemon shortbread cookies on white plate with cookies spread all around it.

Can I Make These With Orange or Lime Instead of Lemon?

Yes! Simply replace the lemon juice and zest with either fresh lime or orange.

Sally’s Cookie Palooza

This recipe is part of my annual cookie countdown called Sally’s Cookie Palooza. It’s the biggest, most delicious event of the year! Browse dozens of cookie recipes over on the Sally’s Cookie Palooza page including: