5 from 1 vote

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Read the full disclosure here.

Sweet, tart, lightly spiced, and perfectly crunchy, these lemon cookies hit all the nontraditional cookie notes. A drizzle of white chocolate adds just the right touch of extra sweetness for an unexpected and delightfully off-beat cookie.

Aerial photo of lemon pepper slice and bake cookies on a cooling rack.

THIS LEMON COOKIE DESERVES YOUR ATTENTION

If there’s one cookie I’m going to beg you to try, it’s this lemon pepper cookie– a seriously underrated gem that has lived on my site since 2017. I’ll admit, when it first crossed my email inbox back in 2016, I was incredibly skeptical. But I’m so glad I took a chance, because it has since become one of my all-time favorites.

This recipe came to me from a reader named LeeAnn who mentioned on one of my posts that her favorite cookie as a kid was a lemon pepper cookie. My immediate response was “WHAT? Please email me ASAP.” I’m happy to say the original recipe she sent is mostly intact here. My tweaks? I added an actual salt measurement (the original just said “a pinch”) and a white chocolate drizzle, inspired by a white chocolate peppercorn gelato at our favorite local gelato spot.

Lemon pepper slice and bake cookies on a cooling rack.

You can skip the drizzle if you like, but I highly recommend trying it on at least a few cookies. It doesn’t make the cookie “better,” per se, but it adds a fun, complementary layer of flavor, basically giving you another way to fall even more in love with a cookie you already adore.

Every year, these cookies would quietly linger in my “maybe-I’ll-make-them again” mental list. Revisiting them reminded me why I loved them in the first place. Plus, this updated post has more photos, a video, and years of dessert-testing experience baked in, bringing you a cookie you absolutely don’t want to miss.

THIS IS A SLICE AND BAKE COOKIE

Slice and bake cookies may be a familiar category for you, but they’re not as widely used as the drop/rolled kind of cookie. Slice and bake make things easy in that you gather all of the cookie dough into a log and quite literally slice and then bake the cookies.

Chocolate salami works this way, too, but that cookie is no bake, so one of my favorite tricks to fixing the wonkiness of a slice-and-bake is the circle cookie cutter trick, which we’ll get to in a bit.

A stack of lemon pepper slice and bake cookies.

One thing to keep in mind about slice and bake cookies is that you’ll need to wait for the cookie dough to chill so you can safely slice it. The dough needs at least 4 hours but ideally overnight to chill in order to be sliceable, so be sure you’re building that time into your cookie baking plan.

INGREDIENTS YOU WILL NEED

You’ll see a couple unlikely ingredients here, one being pepper, which I assume you’re onto by now since it’s in the recipe title. But you might be side-eyeing that cornmeal and believe me, I get it.

Let me tell you, trust that the end result is truly magical. These cookies don’t taste like corn, but rather reflect more of the texture of the cornmeal which gives this lemon pepper cookie a crispy draw alongside the unexpected pepper.

Here’s a visual of what you’ll need, but be sure you’re visiting the recipe card below for exact amounts and preparations.

Aerial photo of ingredients to make lemon pepper cookies with text overlay labeling each ingredient.

HOW TO MAKE LEMON PEPPER COOKIES

Whisk together dry ingredients: while I am typically a “cream the butter and sugar with your spices” kind of gal (hello, gingerbread cookies), we’re adding the pepper in with the dry ingredients.

A glass bowl of dry ingredients for lemon pepper slice and bake cookies.

Make the creamed base: cream your butter and sugar together with the lemon zest. You want to be sure you have a light and fluffy base, because there are no leaveners in these cookies. We’re getting all the lift from the creamed base.

A glass bowl with sugar, butter, and lemon zest in it.

A bowl of creamed butter and sugar with lemon zest in it.

Bring the dough together: this dough is very crumbly, but it will come together nicely when you use your hands to press it into a cohesive dough.

Lemon pepper slice and bake cookie dough in a bowl.

Roll the dough into a log + chill: you’re aiming for a log that’s about 6″ long. You can smush this together with your hands, and then use plastic wrap or parchment to wrap the log up tightly. Chill the dough for at least 4 hours but ideally overnight.

Lemon pepper slice and bake cookie dough in a log.

Slice into rounds: once the log is chilled, slice it into ½” rounds. Place no more than 6 rounds on a baking sheet at a time. Also, be sure you’re lining your baking sheet with parchment paper and not silicone. These cookies do not like to bake on silicone– they spread way too much!

Lemon pepper slice and bake cookie dough shaped into a log and sliced into pieces to bake off cookies.

Bake + reshape: while this step is not required, I find that reshaping hot cookies makes them look nicer, and it tucks in any wonky edges that might have popped up from the pressure of slicing with a knife. Use a round cookie cutter or the rim of a mug or glass while the cookies are piping hot from the oven.

A lemon pepper cookie on a baking sheet with a circle cookie cutter off to the side that was used to reshape the hot cookie.

Add a white chocolate drizzle: this is optional, but I highly recommend it. You can use chopped bar chocolate or melted chips, and don’t forget a little extra sprinkle of black pepper!

Whenever I make these, people can hardly resist coming back for that intriguing crunch, the sweet and tart lemon, and the black pepper that sits ever so softly in the back of your mouth reminding you that it’s there and that it makes a really cool complement to the rest of the cookie.

Not only that, but the back and forth of plain + white chocolate’d ones gives this cookie some supreme draw and a really great way to bring something new to a traditional cookie spread and one that is great to have in mind when you’re looking for something with a little pizzazz.

Someone is taking the top cookie off of a stack of lemon pepper cookies.

Aerial photo of a lemon pepper cookie that has been broken in half on a cooling rack.

MORE LEMON RECIPES

5 from 1 vote

Pin Recipe Print Recipe Rate this Recipe