Super Easy Lemon Crinkle Cookies (Soft and Chewy!)
Lovely, light cookies filled with bright lemon flavor and covered in a dusting of powdered sugar! These easy lemon crinkle cookies take 20 minutes to make, and look super fancy.
These lemon crinkle cookies are beautiful and ridiculously easy. Four ingredients, one bowl, and you’re on your way to soft, chewy cookies with that gorgeous crackly sugar top. They look impressive, but like most recipes around here, are secretly really simple.
I’ve got a step-by-step tutorial with pictures if you’re new to baking, because chewy lemon crinkle cookies are fantasic for beginners. In fact, these lemon cookies are fantastic for a lot of things, like for spring parties, bake sales, or a quick weeknight treat. After all, sometimes you just need a bite of baked sunshine!
Ingredients
These delicious cookies take just 4 simple ingredients to make!
- Lemon Cake Mix: This recipe works best with a box mix that has 15.25 oz of cake mix in it. Be careful — with the recent shrinkflation, some brands have cut back to 13 oz per box. That will still work, but the texture of your cookies will be different.
- Vegetable Oil: You can use any neutral oil here: canola oil, vegetable oil, or sunflower oil all work well. You can also use melted butter, but your cookies will be more dense.
- Eggs: Eggs provide structure in this recipe. I don’t recommend subbing them.
- Powdered Sugar: This is for dusting the outsides of the cookies. I believe it’s sometimes called icing sugar. You can skip this or just roll them in regular granulated sugar for plain old lemon cake mix cookies if you’d like!
Instructions
Tips and Tricks
- If you want more fresh lemon flavor, you can add 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract, or the zest of 1 lemon to the batter.
- If your dough is sticky, wet your hands just a bit before you roll that sticky dough into balls. It keeps the dough from sticking to your hands!
- These cookies spread out quite a bit. If you want more compact lemon crackle cookies, you can cover the dough balls with plastic wrap and place them in the fridge for half and hour to chill the dough before baking.
FAQs
If your cookies spread too thin, the dough may have been too warm. Try chilling the dough for 20–30 minutes before baking.
The edges should be set and the outside of the cookie should look crackled, but the centers may still look slightly soft. They will continue to firm up as they cool, so avoid overbaking to keep them soft and chewy.
Store them in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days. For longer storage, freeze the baked cookies in a freezer-safe container for up to 2 months.
Lemon Crinkle Cookies
Ingredients
- 15.25 oz pkg lemon cake mix, unprepared
- ⅓ cup vegetable oil
- 2 eggs
- ½ cup powdered sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375°.
- In a large bowl, combine the cake mix, oil, and eggs to get a cookie dough.
- Roll the dough into 1 inch balls. Roll the balls in the powdered sugar until thickly covered.
- Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a silicone liner. Place the dough balls on the prepared sheet.
- Bake at 375° for 6-8 minutes. Allow to cool before serving.
