Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links.
🍋🍪Fresh and zesty, these shortbread lemon cookies are buttery and crumble with a melt-in-your-mouth texture.
Gluten-free and egg free, you’ll love these sweet, lemony bites of heaven!🍪🍋
Traditionally Scottish in origin, the shortbread cookie features a biscuit made using a 2-3-4 ratio of sugar, butter and wheat flour. Using no leavening agent (such as egg, baking power or baking soda) the shortbread bakes up with a rich and buttery flavor and a crumbly-but-not dry texture that falls apart when it hits your tongue. Best of all the shortbread cookie is know for it’s no frills simplicity so without further ado…
Gather the following ingredients:
- Butter: You can use salted or unsalted butter depending on your preference.
- Sugar: I’m using a raw cane sugar that I’ve finely blended in my bullet blender to create a fine powder that dissolves easier. You can use any granulated unprocessed sugar of your choosing.
- Almond Flour: Keeping this recipe gluten free, we’ll be using almond flour as our only flour. Opt to use blanched, finely ground almond flour for the best results.
- Lemon Zest: freshly grated lemon zest really makes this recipe POP with a bright, fresh citrus burst.
- Salt: A tiny touch of salt plays nicely with the sweetness and the citrus and amplifies all our flavors.
- Vanilla Extract: A wonderful undertone of vanilla makes this cookie enviable bakery-like.
- Lemon Extract: In addition to the lemon zest we’re using an extra bump of lemon extract to really drive the citrus flavor home.
- Almond Extract: This might seem odd but it’s a bit of a secret ingredient that will really take our cookie to the next level but trust me that it will not overwhelm the cookie at all.
Vegan/Dairy Free?
Though I haven’t personally tested it, you should be able to sub in a vegan butter to make this recipe vegan-friendly and dairy free. I recommend against using coconut oil since it affects both the taste, texture and bake of the cookie.
Here’s How Easy This Cookie Dough Is To Make:
In a medium-sized bowl, cream your butter and sugar together (1&2). Once creamed, mix in your lemon zest, salt and extracts (3). Once fully combined, add in all of your almond flour (4) and work your ingredients together until a fully combined dough is formed (5).
Also, you’ll notice this recipe uses no eggs, so if you want to pinch off a bit of the dough…to test it…you’re more than welcome to! 😉
Next we’ll roll our dough into a log, you can roll it into one large log that’s about 2″ thick, or divide your dough into two and roll two separate (1.5″ thick) logs that we’ll tightly wrap in plastic and pop into the fridge to chill for a couple hours to overnight or as long as 4-5 days.
I like to divide my dough into two since it means I can freeze one or keep it in the fridge until needed. It also means I can get about 30 cookies from it vs a thicker single roll which will give me about 24 slightly larger cookies.
Once our dough is chilled, we’ll unwrap and slice it into rounds that are about 1/4″ thick and place then onto a parchment lined tray. They don’t spread much when they bake so you only really need to leave about 1/2″ space between each cookie.
Pop your tray into the oven and bake your cookies at 350F for 8-10 minutes in a conventional oven or 10-12 minutes in a convection (fan) oven. You’ll know they’re done when you can see the edges leading to the underneath just beginning to brown to a slight golden color.
It’s important to note that overbaking your cookies will make them hard and they won’t have that iconic shortbread texture so be sure you bake them until the bottoms are lightly browned and you can just see that browning on the edges.
Once your bake time is done remove the tray from the oven and allow them to cool. Right out the oven they will be soft but leave them alone on the tray for about 10-15 minutes and they will cool and set to this wonderful shortbread texture with the best sugary lemon flavor with the slightest vanilla hint. Honestly even the smell of these cookies are heavenly.
And that’s it really, easy, simple and wholesome, these lemon shortbread cookies are guaranteed to hit the spot every time and as a bonus they make a fantastic gift be it as a log of cookie dough or as a baked up box of goodies.
☀️ So guys from our sunshiny kitchen to yours, we hope you enjoy this zesty recipe, and if you did, be sure to give the recipe a rating and drop us a comment below! ☀️
Lemon Shortbread Cookie (Gluten-Free, Egg-Free)
Ingredients
- 6 tbsp salted butter softened
- ½ cup raw cane sugar finely blended
- 2 tbsp lemon zest (zest from approx. 1 large lemon)
- 1 tsp lemon extract
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tsp almond extract (optional, but adds a great depth of flavor to the cookies)
- ⅛ tsp Himalayan salt
- 2 ⅓ cups blanched almond flour
Instructions
- Make your Cookie Dough: Cream the butter and sugar together using a hand mixer. Mix in the lemon zest, extracts (lemon, vanilla and almond), and salt. Add almond flour and work until a homogenous dough forms.
- Shape and Chill: Shape dough into a 1.5" thick log and chill for a few hours or overnight. Note: you can leave your cookie dough in the fridge, wrapped in plastic, for up to 4 days before using. Or freeze your dough for up to 2 months. To use thaw your logs overnight in the fridge.
- Bake: Preheat oven to 350°F. Slice the log into ¼” rounds and place onto a parchment-lined baking tray. (You should get about 30 cookies from one batch or 15 cookies per log)Bake for 8-10 min in a conventional oven or 10-12 minutes in a convection (fan) oven. Let cookies cool and set (they will be soft when they come out the oven but will set once cooled).
- Storage: Cool your cookies completely to room temp and store them in an air tight container on the counter for up to a week or in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.
Notes
- You can replace the lemon zest and extract with orange zest and extract. Or you can omit it to make a basic shortbread cookie.
- If you overbake your cookies they may have a harder bite to them and won't be as crumbly soft like shortbread is. Be sure you bake them only until the edges begin to brown slightly.
