These rich zesty cookies certainly live up to their name and melt in your mouth.
Lemon Melting Moments:
- 200g [7/8 cup, or approx 14 tablespoons] unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup confectioners sugar
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- zest of one lemon
Filling:
- 1 cup confectioners sugar
- 50 [ 1/4 cup, or approx 3.6 tablespoons] grams unsalted butter, room temperature
- juice of one lemon
Please note: Comments have been left stating an extra 1/2 cup of confectioners sugar was required for a thicker icing sugar. Please keep this in mind if a thicker consistency is preferred.
Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius / 300 F.
In a large bowl cream the butter, salt and sugar until light and fluffy on a medium setting, roughly 3 minutes. Reduce the speed to low and incorporate the vanilla and lemon zest, scraping down the sides as you go. Sift the flower and cornstarch into the mixture and beat on a low setting until just combined.
Take small portions of the mixture and roll into balls, continue until you have 25-30 (I made mine quite large, I ended up with roughly 23) pieces. If you want them to be as even as possible, roll out the mixture until it forms a log then use a clean knife to section into 30 pieces.
Place them on a baking tray lined with wax paper, gently press on each piece with a fork until it has left an imprint. You can also press on them gently with your fingers, if you do not wish to leave an imprint.
Bake for 20 minutes. let them cool completely.
For the filling beat the sugar, butter and lemon juice on a medium setting until incorporated. Use the back of a spoon, or a knife to ice one side of the cookie then sandwich them together. Try to find two which are similar sizes.
The biscuits can be kept for up to 5 days in an air tight container.
In a large bowl cream the butter, salt and sugar until light and fluffy.
Incorporate the vanilla and lemon zest. Sift the flower and cornstarch, beat on a low setting until just combined.Take small portions of the mixture and roll into balls, continue until you have 25-30 (I made mine quite large, I ended up with roughly 23). If you want them to be as even as possible, roll out the mixture until ti forms a log then use a clean knife to section it into 30 pieces.Place them on a baking tray lined with wax paper, gently press a fork down until it has left an imprint. You can also use your fingers to press them down gently, if you do not wish to leave an imprint.Bake for 20 minutes. let them cool completely before icing.For the filling beat the sugar, butter and lemon juice on a medium setting until incorpotaed. Use the back of a spoon, or a knife to ice one side of the cookie then sandwich them together. Try to find two which are similar sizes.
Incorporate the vanilla and lemon zest. Sift the flower and cornstarch, beat on a low setting until just combined.Take small portions of the mixture and roll into balls, continue until you have 25-30 (I made mine quite large, I ended up with roughly 23). If you want them to be as even as possible, roll out the mixture until ti forms a log then use a clean knife to section it into 30 pieces.Place them on a baking tray lined with wax paper, gently press a fork down until it has left an imprint. You can also use your fingers to press them down gently, if you do not wish to leave an imprint.Bake for 20 minutes. let them cool completely before icing.For the filling beat the sugar, butter and lemon juice on a medium setting until incorpotaed. Use the back of a spoon, or a knife to ice one side of the cookie then sandwich them together. Try to find two which are similar sizes.
Love a good lemon cookie and these look just perfect!
These were tastespotted! I really love lemon AND sugar cookies. They really do look like they will melt in the mouth. : )
Wow, these look delicious! they really do look like they would just melt in your mouth
Love melting moments. I’ve only had cherry. These lemon cookies sound great!
I’ve seen so many recipes lately for lemon desserts! I’m telling you, I really think lemon is becoming the ingredient of the summer this year! So far, I think yours must be the best! The other one I really like is Ina Garten’s Lemon Yogurt Cake. What do you think? Thanks again for sharing this delicious lemon cookie recipe!
these look really yummy!
Lemon is such a great summertime flavor and these look fabulous! Your site is so sweet and pleasant to navigate, too.
The frosting I made is very fluffy, it doesn’t look at all solid like yours. When I sandwich it between two of the cookies it just squishes out. When I first put all of the ingredients together it was very liquidy, so I thought maybe my lemon was too big. I added more butter and sugar. What should I have done to make my frosting turn out like yours?
Hi Molly,
Frosting which is too runny is a result of the icing mixture having a higher ratio of liquids (lemon juice) to solids (butter and icing sugar). Icing (confectioners) sugar is very, very fine sugar. It only needs the tiniest amount of liquid for it to become the consitinacy of a paste.
There are two main reasons as to why your icing is runny, they are:
Refridgerated Butter which has been melted in the microwave to achieve room temperature.
Using too much lemon juice, making the liquids to solids ratio unbalanced.
If you used microwaved butter, place it back into the refridgerator for 5 minutes so it can solidify slightly, before incorporating it into the icing.
If you added too much lemon juice, add an extra 1 – 1/2 cup of icing sugar, 2 tablespoons at a time, until you achieve the consistancy you desire. The extra lemon juice should balance out the sweetness, although you will end up with more icing sugar than what is needed. You don’t need to add extra butter, the current amount in the recipe is more than enough to help solidify the icing and keep the taste.
The frosting should be soft to touch, yet not runny. It will become harder the longer it sits (which is why most frosted cookies only last 3 days).
Hope this helps!
Gemma
This looks delicious! Think I’ll be trying the recipe soon, shall be bookmarking it for now. Thanks for sharing!
Mine ended up being very dry. I increased the sugar to about a cup because I wanted them to be a little sweeter, and still added about 1 3/4 cup of butter. Maybe next time I’ll try adding more butter. Otherwise they tasted great.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m starving or what, but I’m writing this recipe down now and making these ASAP. I don’t normally fall in love with lemon flavored sweets, but I think if there’s an exception this will be it.
Hi, thanks for the recipe!
Can somebody tell me how much a cup is? According to Wikipedia it’s usually 250 ml (at least in Australia). Thanks!
my cookies turned out very doughy on the inside. I increased the temp. and the cooking time. I really didnt like the doughy texture, it tasted uncooked! Maybe because of oven/heat variations, but how did yours turn out?
Hi there! This recipe looks amazing! I was wondering how far in advance these can be made? I would love to make them for my wedding in June! Thanks!
Please do a favor for the Americans who don’t get celsius and metric. Please translate the degrees and measurements into American. I would like to make these and I don’t want my measurement translations to come out wrong. Thank you.
These look soooo good! Maybe I should make cookies a bit bigger and make lemon ice cream…yummy lemon ice cream sandwiches! Or maybe fill with lemon curd? After I try the original recipe, of course! Can’t wait!
Hi again! I’m planning on making these cookies a second time and looking at the measurements, I can’t remember how much butter I used (I don’t have a scale to find out how many grams). About how many tablespoons is 200 grams and 50 grams? I’m coming up with weird numbers when I try and use the online converters. These cookies were a big hit the first time I made them and I’m planning on bringing them to a cookie swap tomorrow!
I’m not quite sure what I did wrong… The cookies taste great, but they thinned out when I cooked them… much, much thinner than shown in the photos. Perhaps I didn’t cook them long enough. I took the first batch out of the over after only 12 minutes because the edges started to brown. S ubsequent batches were baked for only 10 minutes to avoid browing. They’re so fragile that they disintigrate when I try to pick them up to ice them after they’ve cooled, leaving me with a pile of delicious crumbs.
This is a fantastic recipe. I tried it over the weekend and it turned out perfectly – with any recipe like this though, I am always careful to make sure not to overcook. My oven is a bit on the older side and that can lead me to problems if I don’t keep an eye on things!
Lemon melting moments « Itty Bitty Kitchen…
I love lemon bars.. and I love whoopie pies.. so a lemon sandwich cookie thing? Yes please….
I love the idea of lemos cookies…unfortunately, in Mexico, it is impossible to find lemons so I substituted it for limes. hmmm….They are in the oven as I type this!
Love them thanks for posting I made em and now making them again for christmas
I made these & they turned out exquisite! I was so delighted. I followed the directions to a T (even though I had to Google conversions for Celsius to Fahrenheit and Grams to Tablespoons for my American brain)! The texture and flavor could not have been better. Thank you so much for posting! I will definitely be making them again!
My cookies were dry and crumbly. Did I dry them out by leaving on the sheet after baking? Or is at how they are supposed to be? Otherwise very yummy!
These are really tasty, but the proportions in the filling are WAY off. Made exactly by the recipe, it was like a very thin soup! I dumped in another cup or more of powdered sugar–all I had in the house–and it’s still too thin. I spread it on a few cookies, but it just flows out the sides and the cookie on top slithers off sideways. I’ll go back to the store tomorrow and get more powdered sugar and try to salvage them. Next time I will start with juice from half a lemon only, and 1-1/2 cups of powdered sugar–and have more on hand, just in case.
Wow are these ever good! I’ve never made shortbread before, but they seem to have worked out. Only thing is next time I will use two lemons to zest or add extract as the cookies themselves were mild, could be just that I had a small lemon. I will definitely be sharing this site, thank you!
please give the measurements in terms that us americans can understand, please?? i can’t wait to try these. blessings!!
Looks fabulous! Can’t wait to try them. Do you know how long they kept for? Did you store them in the fridge? Do they get hard? (though it may not be an issue for me-I could very well eat them all in one night…)
Delighted to see this on Pinterest! My mother has made these cookies every Christmas from the 1950s to present day. We call them Swedish Melting Moments.
I love the idea of cherry instead of lemon as mentioned by one of your readers. How would we do that?
Love & Light,
Valerie
I LOVE melting moments. My grandma in NZ used to make them, and my mum just made them a couple of weeks ago….I ate about 10. (ohwell;) mmmm. childhood memories
When I was a teenager, my Mom had made some melting moments for a party she was attending and wasn’t home when I got home from school. My boyfriend and I ate THEM ALL. I spent the next couple of days making my Mom some more melting moments. Good memories, of the three of us I’m the only one still alive.
I found these on Pinterest and since I LOVE all things lemon, I thought it would be a perfect task for a slow Saturday afternoon. These were really fun to make! My cookies turned out perfectly and look just like yours. I did have a little trouble figuring out how big to roll the balls in order to get around 30 of them. I case anyone else is having the same question, I eventually rolled mine into about 1-inch balls, then pressed them down with a fork. I also wasn’t sure how far apart to place them on the cookie sheet but they don’t spread out very much when baking. I placed them in 4×5 pattern on my cookie sheet. My icing on the other hand, was WAY too runny. My butter was room temp but I think maybe I just had too much lemon juice – especially because the flavor is very tart! I’m normally the type of person who adds more lemon than most people because I love lemon flavor, but that is not needed here! I ended up adding about 1.5 C additional confectioners sugar in order to get the right consistency. Other than that, these cookies are delicious and a lot of fun! Thanks for sharing your recipe!
Is it okay to substitute lime for lemon? Lime is easier to find in Thailand (where I live). Thanks!
These seriously just made my dreams come true!! Orgasmic!!
It most certainly is! Let me know how they turn out!
Tried these & they are wonderful! Thanks for the recipe! ~Blessings~
Saw this on Pinterest a few months back & waited to make them when I could get my hands on some Meyer Lemons. The cookie itself didn’t have much flavor from the zest alone, so I also added lemon extract. Also the filling was lacking the lemon flavor I desired, so I added some country time lemonade mix to the filling.
Definitely a keeper for a recipe. I love lemon baked goods.
[...] dressed in red, white, and blue while preparing barbecue ribs, scrumptious desserts, making Fourth of July inspired fun crafts, rounding out our day with some water fun before we [...]
Random but aside from these sounding divine!!! I really love the fork where did you find a three prong, I’ve been looking everywhere!
I just made these and they are AMAZING! Yes, you do need to DOUBLE the powdered sugar to 2 cups in the icing to thicken it up. I juiced and zested a big lemon to make sure they were packed with flavor
I just started a 2nd batch because I’m taking them to my neighborhood girls night and I know we’ll eat all of them!
A friend pinned this recipe yesterday… and I HAD to make it. My three-year-old and his friend helped mix, but this is DEFINITELY an “adult” recipe. So light and delicate! They each tried one and then refused the others. I am saving the others for myself and my husband while the kids are happily eating iced animal cookies!
What an amazing burst of colour. Very inspirational way to begin the day. Awesome.
I make a similar cookie that is caramel flavored with brown sugar in the dough and browned butter in the icing! Very addicting! I am curious about both the lemon and the cherry versions. Please post the cherry recipe! Pretty please with sugar cookies on top?
Holy something…. I am speechless. I can feel them melting on my toungue just by looking at the pictures!
[...] While surfing the web last week I found a recipe called Lemon Melting Moments – doesn’t that sound amazing? I have to admit that I was a little disappointed with how they turned out. I thought they were going to be this amazing sweet cookie that melts in your mouth. In reality, they turned out much like shortbread (which I find is dry). The cream for the middle was not so creamy and even though I doubled the amount of confectioners sugar that went in it was runny and very little stayed between the cookies. I ended up putting them in the fridge to help solidify the cream and that made the whole cookie a little hard. Not really a melting moment. Overall, they tasted fine. My husband had no expectations of them like I did and he loved them. I do want to make them again – because they did taste good – it was just disappointing not to have a really sweet flavour in my mouth. Maybe if I’d used true zest instead of lemon juice the flavour would have changed. My husband’s cousin made the same recipe this week and from her comments on facebook, loved it! So I think I may have to hit her up for some tips. I think she made 4 batches of them. =) Overall I think it’s a recipe you all would enjoy and if I get some any cool tips I’ll pass them on. Here’s the link to the recipe:http://ittybittykitchen.com/desserts-sweets/lemon-melting-moments/ [...]
I love lemon anything, and these sound scrumptious. I’m thinkin’ there won’t be any left to store for 5 days. lol
Wow these are amazing!!!! The cookies literally melt in your mouth, you barely need to chew!
Made these. Tried these! Making MORE of these!!!!!
To all those people needing “american” measurements – you can easily google ‘temperature conversion’ and find exactly what you need. As an australian I have the same problem when reading recipes in “american” i.e. imperial measurements. Also bear in mind that other measures such as a cup and teaspoon etc do differ depending upon the country so the best thing is to convert the grams to ounces. Hope this helps!