Shortcrust lemon cookies, grandma’s recipe for easy, quick and fragrant cookies you can make with your own hands.
What better way to start the day than homemade cookies? I don’t think anything is better, so I make them often! My children love refined cookies like pistachio jam thumbprints, but they also love rustier cookies like dunking cookies made with lard and ammonia and Sicilian braided cookies, and filled ones like apple-filled shortcrust cookies: they can eat them for breakfast, as a snack, or as a pick-me-up during the day and they are happy just to smell the aroma that fills the house while I bake!
That’s the case with these simple homemade lemon shortbread cookies that melt in your mouth — very easy, made with a classic shortcrust pastry scented with lemon, a true easy and quick grandma’s recipe that everyone loves.

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Difficulty: Very easy
Cost: Very inexpensive
Rest time: 20 Minutes
Preparation time: 10 Minutes
Portions: about 30 pieces
Cooking methods: Oven
Cuisine: Italian
Seasonality: All seasons

83.43 Kcal

calories per serving

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Energy 83.43 (Kcal)
Carbohydrates 10.10 (g) of which sugars 3.02 (g)
Proteins 1.39 (g)
Fat 4.41 (g) of which saturated 2.79 (g)of which unsaturated 1.57 (g)
Fibers 0.22 (g)
Sodium 3.60 (mg)

Indicative values for a portion of 20 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA^* and FoodData Central^** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.

^* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ^** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

Ingredients

2 1/3 cups Type 00 flour (Italian pastry flour)
11 tbsp butter
6 tbsp sugar (+ 1 tsp)
1 egg (large)
1 teaspoon baking powder (heaping)
1 packet vanillin (vanilla powder)

Shortcrust lemon cookies grandma’s recipe

Baking sheet
Cookie cutter

Shortcrust lemon cookies grandma’s recipe

Pour the flour onto a work surface, make a well and add the butter (I prefer to use cold butter; it helps prevent the dough from warming too much). Work with your hands until you obtain a crumbly, sandy mixture.
Also add the egg, the grated zest of one whole lemon (organic), the vanillin and the baking powder.
Work quickly with your hands until you obtain a smooth, homogeneous dough.
Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
Lightly flour the work surface and roll the dough to a thickness of about 4 mm (about 1/6 inch), then cut it with a cookie cutter of your choice to form the cookies.
I made round disks and decorated them with a sharp knife.
Bake in a convection oven at 338°F for about 10 minutes, then remove from the oven and let cool before moving them off the baking sheet.
Once all the cookies are formed, turn the oven off and put them back inside so they can dry further with the oven’s residual heat.
Finally remove them from the oven and enjoy. Store leftovers in an airtight container and consume within a couple of weeks or before they lose their crispness.
If you liked this recipe, also take a look:
–Gluten-free buckwheat cookies;
–Sicilian braided cookies (recipe with ammonium bicarbonate);
–Cookies with whole wheat flour and brown sugar (butter-free);
–Pistachio shortcrust filled cookies;
–Chocolate and mandarin Christmas stick cookies.