Lemon Sugar Cookie Bars | Sugar Cookie Bars Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How to add flavor to sugar cookies? ›

A teaspoon or two of extracts will noticeably boost flavor when blended into your sugar cookie mix. Vanilla is the obvious choice. For a more intriguing flavor, add both vanilla and almond extracts. Rum, maple and anise are other delicious varieties to consider.

Whether using your favorite recipe or pre-made, you can easily spruce up your sugar cookie dough into gourmet treats by adding nuts, chocolate chips, citrus zest, toffee bits, extracts, or spices.

So by poking the holes in, the cookie. will ensure that the cookie shape does not spread, which sugar cookies love to do. It also helps it stay nice and flat at the top. Now, you see here, we only got one little air bubble.

To help cookies keep their shape, freeze them! I freeze each batch of cut-out cookies for 5 to 10 minutes before baking. They rise just slightly higher and keep their shape better. This really helps when using an intricate cookie cutter, but I do this even when baking circles.

If the baked cookies taste a bit bland (and if the dough is fairly soft and receptive to additions), add salt and/or spices to the remaining dough before baking. If, on the other hand, they're a bit salty for your taste, try rolling the dough balls in sugar before baking.

If you brown your butter (cook the butter until the milk solids brown and it gives off a rich, nutty aroma), this causes the water content of the butter to evaporate, lending no extra moisture to the dough, yielding a very dense, but richly flavoured cookie.

If you're making your own sugar cookie dough, try a different extract — like almond, peppermint, or citrus — instead of vanilla for a flavor change. You can even add finely grated fresh citrus zest for flecks of beautiful color and a nice pop of flavor.

If cookies are burning on the bottom it usually means your pan is too dark. The color and dullness or shine of your pan all affect the finished baking product. A light-colored, non-reflective sheet pan or cookie sheet is best for cookies, and I always line mine with a sheet of parchment paper.

While overcooked sugar cookies are certainly still palatable, they'll be hard and crunchy, instead of soft and chewy.

Why does sugar cookie dough need to rest? ›

Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool. As a result, the cookies will expand more slowly, holding onto their texture. If you skip the chilling step, you're more likely to wind up with flat, sad disks instead of lovely, chewy cookies. Cookies made from chilled dough are also much more flavorful.

Refrigerating the dough allows the flour to fully hydrate and helps to make the cookie dough firmer. Firm dough prevents the cookies from spreading too much, which is why chilling the dough is a crucial step for cut-out and rolled cookies.

Baking powder simply adds carbon dioxide to the equation, providing a more forceful pressure that encourages a dough to spread up and out. Without the well-developed elasticity of a bread dough, the strands of gluten in cookies would sooner snap than stretch, cracking along the surface.

This sugar cookie dough can be used as a perfect base recipe for sugar cookies, and you can flavour it any way that you like. Feel free to add in some lemon zest, or almond extract.

Adding too little sugar can affect the taste and texture of cookies.

Add more sugar or sweetener: If your cookies are too bland, adding more sugar or a natural sweetener like honey or maple syrup can help.

Use Squeeze Bottles to Decorate Cookies with Icing

I find that squeeze bottles work just as well for decorating and are easier for us non-pro bakers to work with. Plus, they're easy to clean! My favorites are little eight-ounce squeeze bottles that you can find at Michael's and other craft stores.