Strawberry Lemon Sugar Cookies
These Strawberry Lemon Sugar Cookies are the perfect sweet treat for your Valentine this year! They're flavored with freeze-dried strawberries and fresh lemon zest and they're totally the way to your Valentine's heart!
Servings: 32 Cookies
Calories: 117kcal
Ingredients
- 1 (one) 1.2 oz. bag unsweetened freeze-dried strawberries
- 2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ tsp. baking powder
- ½ tsp. salt
- 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 tsp. freshly grated lemon zest
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- Wilton Pink gel food coloring, if desired for a richer pink hue
Instructions
- Add strawberries to a small food processor and process into a powder. Set aside.
- Whisk together, flour, baking powder, salt and strawberry powder until well combined. Set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar together on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Add the lemon zest, egg and vanilla extract and continue to mix until combined, about one minute.
- Turn the mixer to low and slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients until combined. Divide the dough into three equal portions and wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two large baking sheets with parchment. Set aside.
- Remove dough from refrigerator and using one portion of dough at a time, turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll dough out to ¼-inch thickness and cut with cookie cutters.
- Transfer to prepared sheet, spaced two inches apart and bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges. Let cool on sheet until firm then remove to wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
I used a 3 1/2-inch heart cookie cutter for my cutouts. The size of your cutter will determine the number of cookies you'll have. Total cookies for my size cookie cutter was 32-34.
I purchased my freeze-dried strawberries at Trader Joe's and I used an entire 1.2-oz. bag.
As I mentioned above, I also added some Wilton Pink food coloring to my dough. I made a few batches of these cookies and I wanted to just go the freeze-dried strawberry route for coloring, but I just thought it wasn't pink enough. Just a smidge of the coloring on a toothpick added to the cookie dough was enough to give it that pretty pink color.