Description
Soft and chewy lemon raspberry cookies made with fresh lemon zest, tangy lemon juice, and bursts of sweet raspberries. Perfect for any occasion and ready in just 25 minutes!
Ingredients
Wet Stuff:
- ½ cup butter (make sure it’s soft or you’ll hate your life)
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 egg (room temp – cold eggs are weird in batter)
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
- 1 lemon’s worth of zest and juice
Dry Stuff:
- 1½ cups flour
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
The Good Stuff:
- 1½ cups raspberries (fresh or frozen, whatever)
If You Don’t Have This:
- No fresh lemon? Bottled works but tastes kinda meh
- Salted butter? Use it but cut the salt in half
- Frozen berries work great, maybe even better than fresh
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 350°F and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper. Don’t skip the parchment – learned that the hard way when I spent 20 minutes scraping cookies off the pan.
Beat that butter and sugar for a full 3 minutes until it looks like fluffy clouds. I used to rush this step and my cookies came out flat. Now I set a timer because apparently my idea of 3 minutes is actually 30 seconds.
Toss in the vanilla, egg, salt, lemon zest, and juice on low speed. It might look weird and curdled when you add the lemon juice – that freaked me out the first time, but it’s totally normal. Just keep mixing until it comes together.
Sift your flour, baking powder, and baking soda together in another bowl. Yeah, sifting’s annoying but it stops your cookies from getting weird lumps.
Dump the flour mixture into the wet stuff slowly while the mixer’s on low. Stop as soon as it looks combined – nobody wants tough cookies.
This is where you gotta be gentle – like you’re tucking a baby into bed. Stir those raspberries in with a spoon, not the mixer. I made the mistake of using the mixer once and ended up with pink cookie dough and raspberry mush.
Use a cookie scoop if you have one – the dough’s gonna be sticky as heck and will drive you crazy if you try spooning it out. I learned this after making the first batch look like abstract art blobs.
Stick them in for 14-16 minutes. They’re done when the tops aren’t shiny anymore and the edges look kinda golden. Don’t wait for them to look fully baked or you’ll get sad, crunchy cookies.
Let them sit on the pan for 10 minutes before moving them. Trust me on this – hot cookies fall apart and you’ll be eating cookie crumbs off the floor like some kind of animal.
Notes
- Stop the Spread: If your dough gets too mushy while you’re working, stick it in the fridge for 15 minutes. Learned this after batch number two spread into one giant cookie sheet pancake.
- Even Browning: Spin those pans halfway through baking. My oven’s wonky and the back always cooks faster.
- Scoop Hack: Wet your cookie scoop between uses – keeps the sticky dough from clinging to it like glue.
- Don’t Overbake: Pull them when they look set but still soft. They keep cooking on the hot pan, so better slightly underdone than hockey pucks.
- Biggest Mistake: Don’t overmix after adding flour. I did this once and got cookies that could double as doorstops.
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American