Over The Top Lemon Drop Candy Cookies

These Over The Top Lemon Drop Candy Cookies are a bakery style cookie that’s a thin, tender, chewy, with a bright lemon flavor. Lemon Drop Candies are the secret ingredient. Betcha can’t eat just one. 

There is a little cookie store near my home, Over The Top Gourmet Cookies, that sells the best lemon cookie I’ve ever tasted. They don’t have a subtle lemon flavor like some lemon cookies. They are a sweet, but lemon bar tart cookie.

My neighbor and I decided their secret ingredient is crushed lemon drop candies. (Although I recently found out they use Lemonheads.) 

I did an internet search to see if I could find a lemon cookie recipe made with lemon drops and sure enough there were several online, but they used shortening.

I’m pretty sure the Lemon Cookies at Over The Top are made with butter, so I combined a Lemon Drop Candy Cookie recipe with an Old-Fashioned Sugar Cookie recipe from Martha Stewart’s Cookies. The result is a tender, chewy, scrumptious Over the Top Lemon Drop Candy Cookie.

The cookies spread quite a bit, so I only baked eight cookies per sheet. You want to take them out of the oven before the middle is completely set so the cookie is chewy and not crunchy.

The lemon glaze on the cookies really ups the lemon flavor of the cookies. I added just one drop of lemon gel food coloring. Then I finished them with some rainbow sparkling sugar.

Laura from Real Mom Kitchen posted her delicious version of Over the Top Reese’s Peanut Butter Cookies. The Over the Top Cookies are definitely the best bakery cookies I’ve ever had. If you are in the Salt Lake area, you need to stop by and try them. My friend tells me their mint cookie is fabulous too.

If you’re a lemon lover, you need to make these cookies asap.

Over The Top Lemon Drop Candy Cookies

Print Recipe

Ingredients:

• 3 cups flour
• 1 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
• 1 (4 ounce) package lemon drop candies, crushed

Glaze

• 1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 drop of Lemon Yellow gel food coloring, optional

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.

Put sugar and lemon zest in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed 30 seconds. Add butter; mix until pale and fluffy, about 1 minute. Mix in eggs one at a time; add vanilla and lemon extract. Gradually add flour mixture, and mix until just combined. Stir in crushed lemon drop candies.

Roll into 1-inch balls (I used a #40 ice cream scoop), flatten slightly and bake on parchment-lined baking sheet for 10-12 minutes until edges start to brown and center is almost set. (The cookies spread quite a bit, so I only baked eight cookies per sheet.) Let cool slightly on pan 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer cookies to cooling racks; let cool completely.

Make a glaze by mixing powdered sugar with lemon juice; then spread over cookie tops.

More lemon cookies you might like:

Lemon Bar Cookie Cups, Barbara Bakes
Lemon Shortbread Cookies, Barbara Bakes
Light and crispy Lemon Oatmeal Cookies, Your Homebased Mom
Lemon Crinkle Cookies, Recipe Girl

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