Chewy Lemon Sugar Cookies Recipe | My Baking Addiction (2024)

FAQs

Why are my sugar cookies chewy? ›

White Sugar + Brown Sugar

Naturally a sugar cookie is going to use white granulated sugar. It's just how it is. But part of what makes a cookie chewy is a high moisture content. Brown sugar has more moisture than white sugar, because it contains a little bit of molasses.

Excess Sugar and Fat

If your cookie contains excess sugar or fat, it will spread while baking. If your first batch of cookies spreads, try adding a few tablespoons of flour to help thicken the remaining dough.

Pure lemon extract is made from the essential oil of fresh lemon that's mixed with alcohol as a preservative. It's extremely potent, so a little goes a long way—it's generally used in small amounts (usually ¼ to 1 teaspoon in a recipe).

Baking soda encourages spreading while baking powder puffs the cookies up. If your recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of baking soda, you would use 3 to 4 teaspoons of baking powder. Caution: This could result in an unwanted flavor shift.

Cornstarch helps product soft and thick cookies. Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie. An extra egg yolk increases chewiness. Rolling the cookie dough balls to be tall and lumpy instead of wide and smooth gives the cookies a bakery-style textured thickness.

The ingredients you use and how you shape your cookies both play an important role in whether your cookies turn out crispy or chewy. The type of flour and sugar you use, if your cookie dough contains eggs, and whether you use melted or softened butter all factor into the crispy-chewy equation, too.

Over-working the dough yields a tough cookie, which is not at all what you want. The very best sugar cookies are soft and tender. → Follow this tip: One of the keys to great sugar cookies is mixing the dry ingredients only until they're just incorporated, and not a second longer.

Some common techniques are to include natural lemon juice, lemon zest, or even lemon pulp to add or boost lemon flavor. Other options for adding lemon into your flavor profile include the use of natural and artificial flavors.

As lemon extract has a much more concentrated flavor, you'll need to use double the amount of lemon juice as lemon extract. This is fine for dressings, marinades and pickle recipes, but can be a problem with baked dishes.

Is lemon extract stronger than lemon oil? ›

Lemon oil is not lemon-infused oil, but rather highly aromatic oil that is pressed from lemon rinds; as such, it is used in recipes to replace lemon zest (and not juice). Lemon oil is much more potent than lemon extract, which is lemon oil diluted in alcohol.

When cookies are too cakey, there are two main culprits: too much leavening (baking powder or baking soda) or too much egg. If there is too much baking powder or baking soda in the dough, the cookies will rise too much when baking, creating a cakier structure. Eggs also promote a cakey structure in cookies.

Too much flour causes the dough to become dry and crumbly, which prevents it from flattening out during baking. As a result, your cookies will stay in their original shape instead of spreading out into nice circles.

Cookies are always more puffy when just baked. If you want a thinner cookie, leave a tablespoon or two of flour out. If you want thicker cookies add a tablespoon or so of extra flour.

Two ways that you can help make sure your chocolate chip cookies come out soft and chewy is to add a packet of cook-and-serve vanilla pudding mix to the batter, or add finely shredded chocolate instead of chunkier chocolate. The smaller chocolate particles will melt faster and create more moisture in your cookies.

But if you roll the dough out too thick, then they won't cook through and become dense and, honestly, pretty gross. The ideal thickness to roll out your sugar cookie dough is about 1/4"--that way, they'll be tough enough to be handled and decorated, but thin enough to stay a little crunchy.

If you add too much flour, your cookies won't spread at all and won't be soft or chewy. Baking powder – This gives the sugar cookies lift, without adding too much spread or browning.

Sticky dough.

If your dough is too sticky, you may notice that your sugar cookies aren't turning out as flat as you'd like them too. To make sure that your flour measurement is the most accurate it can be for your recipe, weigh the flour using a digital scale. Every baker should own one!