These soft and chewy Lemon White Chocolate Cookies are the perfect texture with a sweet and subtle lemon flavor. Perfect in a holiday cookie tin or for everyday enjoyment!
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Why Make This Recipe
- Great Flavor: Lemony but not too lemony, with a sweet complement of white chocolate. So tasty!
- Perfect Texture: Team Chewy over here: these lemon cookies with white chocolate chips have the texture of a perfect chocolate chip cookie. (Trust me, been making these for years.)
- Unique: We love these as part of a cookie assortment. Add some Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, and some Almond Flour Chocolate Cookies, and you have something to please everyone!
🥗 Ingredients
- Sugar: We use both granulated sugar and brown sugar in this recipe—you could switch to all granulated if you like, though we like the deeper flavor from the brown sugar addition.
- Butter: Go with unsalted, so you can control the salt content in your cookies. If you only have salted butter, add only ½ teaspoon of kosher salt.
- Lemon: Zest your lemon first, then squeeze out the juice. One lemon will give you all you need for this recipe. And the best flavor definitely comes from using a fresh lemon, rather than store-bought lemon juice.
- White Chocolate Chips: You could use white chocolate chunks for this recipe, or chop up a white chocolate bar. You could also add in some butterscotch chips as well!
🥣 Step-by-Step Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Melt 12 tablespoons unsalted butter in a medium saucepan.
Whisk in ¾ cups granulated sugar and ½ cup packed brown sugar.
Let cool for a few minutes.
Whisk in 2 eggs, 1 ½ tablespoons lemon juice, and 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla.
In a separate bowl, whisk together 2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 2 teaspoons lemon zest, and ¾ teaspoon salt.
Stir dry ingredients into the wet mixture with a sturdy wooden spoon.
Stir in 2 cups white chocolate chips.
Use a 1 ½ tablespoon cookie scoop to scoop out cookie dough, then roll into balls with your hands.
Bake for 9-12 minutes, until just starting to brown around the bottom edges.
Remove baking sheet from oven, and bang it on the counter 2-3 times.
Let cookies sit for 2 minutes, then remove and let cool on a rack.
🧐 Recipe FAQs for Lemon White Chocolate Cookies
Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature. They will last for 2-3 days. If they get a little stale, pop them in the microwave for a few seconds to warm them up.
Yes! You can freeze both the dough and the cookies. To freeze before baking, scoop into balls, then put the balls on a parchment lined plate and put into the freezer.
When balls are frozen, pull them off the parchment and put into a freezer safe ziptop bag. Store for up to 3 months, and bake directly from frozen (you may need to add a minute or two to the bake time).
Or, freeze baked cookies in a ziptop bag for up to 3 months. Just take out and bring to room temperature before eating.
👩🍳 Expert Tips
Using a cookie scoop makes scooping cookies so easy! You don’t have to use the trick of rolling the scooped dough into circles, but it does help to give you cookies that are perfectly round.
The bang-on-the-counter trick for cookies is one of my favorites. It flattens the cookies a bit as they cool, making them a little more dense and chewy. I learned that with making chocolate chip cookies, and it works for these lemon white chocolate chip cookies too!
If you don’t want to mix your cookie dough in a saucepan, you can also melt the butter in a large microwave-safe bowl. Then add the sugars to that and go from there. Melted butter is key to the chewy texture of these cookies, so that’s why we start with that instruction.
We always recommend measuring ingredients by weight instead of using measuring cups if you have a baking scale. There is a huge difference in the amount of flour or brown sugar that can be packed into a measuring cup!
The beauty of these cookies is that the dough does not need to be chilled before baking. You can chill the dough if you prefer, but you can also bake right after you make the batter. Just make sure that your butter mixture has cooled to at least lukewarm before adding the eggs and then the rest of the ingredients.
If you put the batter together too quickly, and it seems too runny to form cookie balls, let it cool in the refrigerator for just a few minutes. That will allow the butter to firm up a little.
Love a lemon dessert? Try this silky smooth Lemon Posset next!
🍪 Other Delicious Cookie Recipes
This recipe inspired several other versions of white chocolate cookies that you might like as well:
Got leftover Halloween candy? Try these Snickers Cookies. Or try one of these delicious options:
And don't miss our Almond Flour Oatmeal Cookies or Almond Flour Chocolate Cookies, if you are looking for a gluten-free cookie!
And if lemon is your favorite flavor, you can't go wrong with these Lemon Shortbread Cookies, these Lemon Lavender Cookies, or these Blueberry Lemon Cookies.
If you try this Lemon White Chocolate Cookies recipe, we would love to hear from you! Please rate this recipe and leave a comment below—your feedback is invaluable to us.
And please follow along on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook or subscribe to our newsletter. We'd love to inspire you with more delicious, healthy, and seasonal recipes!
More Recipes to Try
📖 Recipe
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Lemon White Chocolate Cookies
Equipment
Ingredients
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- ½ cup light brown sugar packed
- 12 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 2 large eggs
- 1 ½ tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 ¾ cups flour
- 2 teaspoons lemon zest
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 cups white chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Melt butter in a medium saucepan.
- Whisk in granulated and brown sugars. Let cool for a few minutes.
- Whisk in eggs, vanilla, and lemon juice.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, lemon zest, baking soda, and salt.
- Stir dry ingredients into the wet mixture with a sturdy wooden spoon.
- Stir in white chocolate chips.
- Use a 1 ½ tablespoon cookie scoop to scoop out cookie dough, then roll into balls with your hands.
- Bake for 9-12 minutes, until just starting to brown around the bottom edges.
- Remove baking sheet from oven, and bang it on the counter 2 or 3 times.
- Let cookies sit for 2 minutes, then remove and let cool on a rack.
Notes
Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature. They will last for 2-3 days. If they get a little stale, pop them in the microwave for a few seconds to warm them up. Cookies can be frozen as well. Expert Tips:
If you don’t want to mix your cookie dough in a saucepan, you can also melt the butter in a large microwave-safe bowl. Then add the sugars to that and go from there. Melted butter is key to the chewy texture of these cookies, so that’s why we start with that instruction. The bang-on-the-counter trick for cookies is one of my favorites. It flattens the cookies a bit as they cool, making them a little more dense and chewy. I learned that with making chocolate chip cookies, and it works for these lemon white chocolate chip cookies too!
Nutrition
Instagram Users: Now that you've made this recipe, tag me @vanillabeancuisine or #vanillabeancuisine because I'd love to see your results!
More About Molly
Cooking healthy(ish) meals with seasonal ingredients is my passion. Trained as a French pastry chef, I spent over 10 years as a personal chef. Here you'll find well-tested recipes that you and your family will love!
Judy says
Could you add sourdough discard to this recipe?
Molly Pisula says
Hi Judy, I am honestly not sure. I have never tried that before! If you give it a go, I'd love to know the answer!
Lyn Evans says
I was excited to try this recipe. I needed to double it and was happy to see that there was an option to automatically double the recipe. And per your suggestion I was going to weigh my ingredients. Unfortunately, the option to double the ingredients does not double the weight of the ingredients the same way it does measured ingredients. When the dough was wetter than I thought it should be, I was comforted by your notation that if I mixed my wet and dry ingredients too fast it might be loose and to put it in the refrigerator. Needless to say, the next morning when I tried to bake them off I had a disaster. Not only that, it was a total waste of money! With white chocolate chips costing close to $6 I was not happy. If you can't automatically double the weighed ingredients as you do measured ingredients you need to include a notation to that effect.
Molly Pisula says
Lyn, thank you for calling this to my attention! I have fixed the recipe card so that it will multiply the metric measurements automatically when you hit the 2x button. So sorry that your cookies didn't work!
Rohan says
These were an absolute treat! A good number disappeared even before fully cooling. Thanks for the recipe and clear instructions. The only change I made was increasing the amount of lemon zest to 3 tsp, and the end result was delightfully lemony.
Molly Pisula says
Always in favor of more lemon zest! Glad you enjoyed these!
KC says
Could this dough be made and frozen ahead of baking?
Molly Pisula says
Yes, definitely! Scoop into the dough balls and put them on a parchment lined sheet pan or plate in the freezer. When they are frozen, you can transfer to a ziplock freezer bag for storage. Bake from frozen and add 1-2 minutes bake time.
Allison says
Am I able to use browned butter for this recipe?
Molly Pisula says
Sure! I bet that would add lovely flavor.
Deann says
I added raspberries to the cookies midway through baking. Perfect balance of sweet and tart. I think adding chopped macadamia nuts would elevate this the perfect summer cookie!
Molly Pisula says
Ooh yum, raspberries and macadamia nut additions would be superb!
Evie says
Hi! Do you have the butter measurement in grams, please?
Molly Pisula says
Oh thanks for pointing out I forgot to put that in there! 12 T butter = 170 grams. I will add to the recipe card!
Stefanie Abbott says
is there a best or recommended way to make these more lemony
Molly Pisula says
Sure! Just add more lemon zest and/or more lemon juice.
Julia says
I made these and they were very good with a nice lemon flavor! A little too sweet though. I'd take the sugar down by at least half next time.
Molly Pisula says
So glad you liked them! You might want to experiment with just taking the sugar down a little bit next time rather than by half, just because it will change the texture of the cookie as well. Happy experimenting!
Deann says
For the sake of texture, I think you might be better off reducing the amount of white chocolate chips than the sugars.