How to Make Strawberry Lemonade Cookies
If you’re looking for a delicious and unique cookie recipe, look no further than these Strawberry Lemonade Cookies! They are easy to make and the flavor combo is sweet, tart, and refreshing. These are the best cookies for spring or summer, a baby shower, brunch spread, or anytime you want chewy cookies with a beautiful fruity twist.
The base cookie is a soft and chewy lemon sugar cookie, but the frosting is the star of the show here, which is made with a key ingredient: freeze dried strawberries, which is my favorite way to color and flavor fruity frostings. You crush them into a powder and fold it into the frosting which is the perfect way to get a beautiful pink color and bright strawberry flavor. Fresh strawberries can leave the frosting a bit runny so I prefer using freeze dried!
Ingredients needed for Strawberry Lemonade Cookies:
- All purpose flour
- Granulated sugar
- Eggs
- Unsalted butter
- Baking powder
- Salt
- Vanilla
- Lemons
- Freeze dried strawberries
- Powdered sugar
- Milk or cream
Supplies:
- Large Bowl
- Medium Bowl
- Stand mixer or hand mixer
- Baking Sheet
- Wire Rack
How to Make Strawberry Lemonade Cookies:
To start, preheat your oven to 350°F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. In a medium bowl whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, cream butter with sugar and lemon zest. Add the eggs and vanilla, and mix until fluffy. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture until a dough forms. Using a cookie scoop or a small ice cream scoop, portion each lemon cookie dough ball onto the prepared baking sheet. Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes, or until the cookies are golden brown around the edges.
Once the cookies are done, transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely. While they are cooling, make the strawberry buttercream frosting by using an electric mixer with a paddle attachment butter until creamy. Gradually add in 1 and 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, 1 teaspoon of fresh lemon juice, and 1/4 cup of crushed freeze-dried strawberries, and mix until smooth and creamy. Add more lemon juice or powdered sugar as needed.
Once the cookies are completely cool, spread a generous dollop of the strawberry buttercream frosting on top of each one. If serving right away, garnish with fresh strawberries.
Want to make raspberry lemonade cookies? Sub for freeze dried raspberries instead!
So the next time you’re in the mood for a sweet treat, give these Strawberry Lemonade Cookies a try. They are the perfect combination of sweet and tangy, and they are sure to satisfy your sweet tooth. Happy baking!
Soft Frosted Strawberry Lemonade Cookies
Ingredients
For the Cookies:
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 1/4 tsp. baking powder
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1½ sticks, 12 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 large egg, plus one egg yolk
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 tsp lemon extract, or juice in a pinch
- zest of one lemon
For the Frosting:
- 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
- 2/3 cup freeze-dried strawberries- ground into powder
- 2-3 cups powdered sugar
- splash of milk or cream
Instructions
For the Cookies:
- Preheat oven to 350F. In a small bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt, set aside.
- In a large bowl of a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and yolk and mix until smooth.
- Add the extracts and zest and continue to mix until incorporated.
- Gradually add the dry ingredients and beat on low until just combined.
- Use a small cookie scoop to portion dough and then roll into balls and flatted slightly with your fingertips. Place dough 2-3 inches apart on a sil-pat or parchment lined cookie sheet and bake for 9-11 minutes or until just set on the edges. (Cookies won't be golden.) Chill dough in between baking each batch.
- Allow cookies to cool before frosting.
For the Frosting:
- Cream the butter with the strawberry powder and 2 cups of powdered sugar until thick and creamy. Add a splash of milk and the rest of the powdered sugar gradually until frosting is thick, smooth, and spreadable.
- Pipe or spread frosting on cooled cookies.
Nutrition Information:
Yield: 2 Serving Size: 1 gramsAmount Per Serving: Unsaturated Fat: 0g
So glad you’re feeling better!
These cookies look SO good! I love the idea of freeze-dried fruit, I’ll totally try it.
Good to see you back. Any suggestions for a frosting that will stand up to heat? That doesn’t get soft and runny?
You’d have to use shortening instead of butter for warm weather frosting. Not as tasty but it won’t melt! There is a good organic non-hydrogenated brand I’ve used before!
Thanks, we’ll try that
I reeeeaaally love cookies and am always looking for new ways to make them summer-friendly and let me say these look really summery and refreshing! I have to admit I’m not a big fan of dried fruits and usually avoid using the stuff in my recipes but the frosting in the pictures looks so fluffy and overall delicious that I might change my mind about it :)
Btw, glad to know you’re feeling better now!
xo, Elisa
Glad you are up and running again. I am going to make this tonight for the sugar. Okies I pulled out of the freezer for my bridge group. Perfect timing! Thank you.
Oops, that should have been cookies, not Okies. Darn automatic speller! Also, you can find the freezed dried fruit in strawberry, banana, and apples at Costco.
These look wonderful, Audra! Funny, but I just baked some strawberry-lemon cookies last week for a client. It just seems like the perfect time of year for those flavors! (So glad you’re feeling better, too!)
These look really good. Question: Should I measure 2/3 cup of dried strawberries before I grind them, or after?
Hi! Yes- 2/3 cup of dried strawberries and then use all the powder :)
These look amazing! I think I will do half strawberry and half blueberry – how pretty would that be? Maybe for July4th. Thank you for such a great idea. I SO happy you are feeling better.
Glad to hear you’re feeling better! I totally know the feeling like you’ll never be normal again. It’s the woorrssstttt.
Glad that you are feeling better again and that you had such wonderful care while you were ill! These cookies look amazing and I am so intrigued by using freeze-dried fruit as the flavor base-such a good idea!
I am glad you are feeling better. These cookies look delicious. Strawberry lemonade cookies on a hot summer day…refreshing. :)
As one of your commenters said…. it is very intriguing to use the dried fruit. I will have to try these and some other flavors of fruit too!
So glad that you’re back on your feet and feeling better — the springtime/early summertime flu is the worst!
These cookies sound intriguing, and as someone who is basically addicted to all kinds of lemonade in the summer, I know I’m going to have to make these beautiful cookies soon!
Wow these look amazing! Thank you for sharing :)
http://neatly-packaged.blogspot.com/
I loveee freeze dried strawberries! They’re the best for getting that perfect strawberry flavor without added liquid. Can’t wait to try these!
So glad to hear you’re feeling better, dear! These cookies look delicious… I have yet to try freeze-dried strawberries but this is a perfect excuse to change that!
So glad to see you back in the kitchen, I haven’t had pneumonia, but I have bad health generally, so sometimes I’m just too weak to get in the kitchen and I can’t imagine ever going there again, it’s rough! I adore Freeze dried strawberries, such an intense burst of flavour! Hadn’t thought of making frosting with them, I too have been looking for the perfect strawberry frosting which holds, fresh strawberries are just hard work and artificial tastes bleurgh, thank you for this recipe, going to give it a try!!
They look incredible, Audra! I want a dozen. Pinned!
Hi Audra!
Any substitute for freeze dried strawberries? Don’t have any in the local vicinity and I’d really like to make them today. :)
Hey! For this specific frosting- not really. You could use preserves or jam instead but you’d want to adjust the liquids to make sure the frosting wasn’t too runny :)
Glad to know you’re feeling better deary – can’t believe you made these little gems through a fever haze! I would have been glued to the couch. Stiff frosting is the best :)
These are awesome. My boyfriend loves sugar cookies, so I’ve tried a number of recipes, but he announced that these were by far the best I’ve made. Thanks for the great recipes!
I’m so glad he liked them- they’re some of my favorite too!
Just whipped this frosting up for some lemon cupcakes. That is amazing. I would never have thought to use the freeze dried strawberries. BRILLIANT!! and delish!
I just wanted to let you know that over the last few years, I’ve used freeze-dried fruit in frostings several times because of this recipe, and had great results with most of them. (Well. Not the blueberries.) And today I found myself remembering them again – and now I’m about to set out the butter and the eggs and will be making your cookies again later today. Thank you so much for sharing!