Lemon Sugar Cookie Bars (Large Batch)

When spring rolls around my inbox tends to see many emails that have a similar question. “I am in charge of planning food for girls camp! Help!” or “I have to feed 300 people at my family reunion, what ever shall I do?” or “Please send chocolate immediately, my son is leaving on a mission and after his farewell 559 high school students will plow into my house demanding food. SOS.”

Feeding a large crowd can certainly be overwhelming! I’ve been there, truly. Coming up this week I will post a super informative, hopefully helpful post with tips for serving all kinds of large crowds and how to do it smoothly and without pulling (too much of) your hair out. Ha! There will also be links to many, many recipes that work well in this kind of situation. (Many include chocolate, just saying.)

Before I share that post with you, I wanted to get this great recipe for Lemon Sugar Cookie Bars (Large Batch) up and published (so I could use it in the aforementioned post) and because these Lemon Sugar Cookies are The Bomb Dot Com and even if you aren’t serving a large crowd you should seriously make them at your earliest convenience. They are super soft, have a fantastic lemon flavor and make a person feel like they are eating a pretty bite of sunshine. Who doesn’t want to do that, I ask you. Who.

Let’s do it!

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. Into a stand mixer or large mixing bowl place 1 C softened butter, 1 (8 ounce) package softened cream cheese, and 1 1/2 C sugar. Cream together for 2 minutes. Add 1 egg and beat for an additional minute.

3. Add the zest of 1 lemon (about 1 loosely packed tablespoons) and 1 tsp lemon juice. Mix to combine.

4. In a separate bowl toss together 2 1/2 C flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt.

5. Mix to combine. The batter will be pretty thick and sticky.

6. Spray a large sheet pan (mine is 11×17) with cooking spray and scoop the dough onto it. I like to spray the back side of a wooden spoon with cooking spray and use it to flatten the dough out evenly over the pan.

7. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the center is cooked through. You don’t want them to get too dark, that will result in a super dry bar, so watch them carefully.
8. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.

9. To make the frosting place 1/2 C softened butter, 4 ounces softened cream cheese, 3 1/2 C powdered sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp milk, 4 drops yellow food coloring, a dash salt and 2 Tb lemon juice into your stand mixer and mix until combined and smooth. Add more powdered sugar if it’s too thin.

10. Top the bars with the frosting and smooth it out.

Add some sprinkles if you so choose!

Looking for more Large Batch Recipes? Here are a few of my favorites!

Large Batch Cookie Bars 

Large Batch Frosted Brownies 

Hot Fudge Brownies for a Crowd 

Almond Butter Sheet Cake