Pink Lemonade Cookies

It’s the end of the school year and I wanted to pick something summery for the last day of school. Most of my favorite flavors in cookies: cinnamon, ginger, caramel, are not really seasonal for when the weather is nice. I do love citrus in cookies, so my husband and I were looking for something summery with citrus. He found these pink lemonade cookies and they sounded perfect.

I’ve actually looked at quite a few pink lemonade cookies, but they usually use a pink lemonade cake mix as the cookie base, and I didn’t want to use that. This recipe uses pink lemonade mix, so it’s not 100% from scratch, but I figured it would work. I guess you could use just lemon extract if you wanted to make them without a mix of some sort, but for the “pink” aspect, I’m not sure you could add more than food color. While pink lemonade can be lemonade with color added, it usually is flavored with fruit or fruit juice of some sort.

These cookies are so easy to put together. I was fortunate that I had lemon extract on hand, as I had missed this when I read the recipe before going to the grocery store. They have a lovely lemon scent, and they are just the slightest bit pink. Once baked, they aren’t super pink, but you could always add some food color if you really wanted to. The cookies come out of the oven as perfect round, crackly cookies. The lemon flavor is just the right amount of tart, which is wonderful with the sweetness of the cookie.

Pink Lemonade Cookies

1 cup butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

1⁄2 cup powdered sweetened pink lemonade mix

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1⁄2 teaspoon lemon extract

2 3⁄4 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

Sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter, sugar, and lemonade mix on medium until light. Add the egg, vanilla, and lemon extract and beat again on medium until incorporated. Add the flour and baking soda and mix on low until the dough comes together.

Shape the dough into 1-1/4” balls; roll the balls in sugar and place on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 10 minute, until barely browned along the edges. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from Food.com