These delicious lemon cookies with swirl frosting are the perfect Easter treat! Soft and chewy Easter cookies get topped with a frosted swirl of buttercream frosting and some Easter sprinkles for a delicious Easter treat!
Combine the butter, sugar, and brown sugar in a large mixing bowl and cream together until it is light and fluffy.
1/2 cup unsalted butter, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup granulated sugar
Add in the egg, vanilla extract, and lemon juice and mix well.
1 large egg, 1 tsp vanilla extract, juice of half a lemon
Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl, then add it to the wet ingredients. Mix just enough to combine the wet and dry ingredients. The dough will be very crumbly.
Divide dough into 6-18 equal portions (depending on the size of cookie you want), then gently form a ball with each portion. Do not knead or handle the dough too much.
Place the dough balls on a parchment lined baking sheet about 2" apart then place in the refrigerator and chill for at least 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350°F then bake the cookies for 15 - 18 minutes for large cookies or 10-12 minutes for smaller cookies, or until the edges just start to brown slightly.
Allow cookies to cool on the pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to finish cooling.
Pipe the buttercream around the top of each cookie, top with Easter sprinkles and serve.
Easter sprinkles
Frosting
While cookies are cooling, make the buttercream.Beat the butter until it is fluffy then add in the lemon juice and mix to combine.
2 sticks unsalted butter, juice of half a lemon
Slowly add the powdered sugar a little at a time until it is well combined and the buttercream is the consistency desired for piping.
6 cups powdered sugar
Divide the buttercream into 3 or 4 separate bowls and add a drop or two of you choice of food coloring to each bowl. Mix until color is consistent throughout frosting.
pastel food coloring
Add a little of each color to the inside sides of a piping bag fitted with a round piping tip.
Notes
Refrigerate the cookies for up to five days. Refrigerating them is the only way to keep them chewy – they’ll get dry if you leave them out at room temperature.Freeze the lemon cookies before frosting for up to three months in a freezer safe zipper top bag.Use a gallon size zipper tog bag with the corner cut off to pipe the frosting if you don’t have a piping bag and round piping tip. You could also just spread the buttercream on with a knife, but it won’t look nearly as pretty without the swirled frosting.Make sure when you’re pushing the frosting down toward the piping tip that you’re pushing all sides to create that pretty swirled effect rather than one color, another color, and so on. Also be careful not to mix it all together too much or you’ll just end up with one color of frosting that’s not pretty.