Lemon Brownies

These Lemon Brownies are gooey and soft. They are tangy and sweet, with a delicious lemon glaze, bursting with lemon flavor! They have a chewy and fudgy texture, with the tart flavor of fresh lemons in a sweet and delicious dessert.

I will show you the step-by-step on making delicious Lemon Brownie Recipe.

It takes about 20 minutes to put this dessert together, plus the time in the oven, and in under one hour or so you can be enjoying these delicious brownies!

These Lemon Brownies have such a gooey texture. They are the perfect dessert for lemon lovers!

Let’s learn how to make them!

Lemon Brownie Recipe

Here are the ingredients you need to make this recipe:

• Lemon zest
• Granulated sugar
• White chocolate
• Butter
• Fresh lemon juice
• Eggs
• All-purpose flour
• Salt
• Powdered sugar

How to make Lemon Brownies

Here are the instructions on making this recipe.

First and foremost, let’s make lemon sugar.

To make lemon sugar, simply add the lemon zest to the granulated sugar in a bowl, and rub the sugar and zest together between your fingers to help release the citrus oils from the zest.

Alternatively, you could process the sugar and lemon zest in the food processor a few times, that will also cause the oils in the lemon zest to be released and infused in the sugar.

Then mix the white chocolate with the butter, and melt in the microwave for 15 second intervals, whisking until completely melted.

Add the lemon sugar to the bowl.

It’s important to use good quality white chocolate. I used Lindt for this recipe. It will make a huge difference in the final results. You could use Callebaut, Valrhona, or even the white chocolate baking bars from the store. They will taste much better than most white chocolate chips sold at the store from Nestle or Ghirardelli, for example.

After whisking the sugar with the melted butter and white chocolate, add the eggs and whisk again.

Add the lemon juice and mix.

Next, add the flour and salt.

Don’t over mix the wet batter, mix just until combined and smooth.

We aren’t adding any leavening agents such as baking powder or baking soda, because we are going for gooey brownies with that very characteristic fudginess. Adding a leavening agent would make the brownies have more of a cake like texture.

Prepare a 8×8″ pan by greasing it with cooking spray, or coating the sides with butter.

Once the batter is ready, pour it into the 8×8″ baking pan, and bake in the oven for about 35 minutes.

Your oven should be at 350ºF if it’s a regular conventional oven. If your oven runs hot, or if it’s convection or gas, use 325ºF instead.

The brownies are done baking when the top is set, and a toothpick inserted into the pan comes out clean.

Once the brownies are baked, make the glaze before serving.

Lemon Glaze

To make the glaze, simply whisk the powdered sugar and a couple tablespoons lemon juice together. Start by adding just one tablespoon, and add more as needed to thin out the consistency of the glaze.

Pour the glaze over the cooled down brownies.

You can add the zest to the glaze, or you can sprinkle the zest over the glazed brownies.

The glaze is sweet, tart, and will perfectly compliment the rich brownies.

Let the glaze set for 10 to 15 minutes before slicing and serving.

Tips for making the best Lemon Brownies

• Don’t skip making the lemon sugar, it takes just a couple of minutes and helps release so much lemon flavor into the brownies.
• It’s preferable to make these brownies by hand, using a whisk, over using an electric mixer. Because if you over mix the batter at any point, you can incorporate too much air into it. That can make the brownies to rise too quickly and too much in the oven as they bake, which will cause them to sink and deflate.
• Don’t over bake, or the brownies will turn out dry instead of gooey.
• Let the glaze set before slicing.
• Use good quality white chocolate.

What kind of pan to use

I used a 8×8″ baking pan. You can also use a round 8″ or 9″ pan.

To make this recipe in a 9×9″ pan, you will have to multiply each ingredient per 1.5. If you make just one single recipe, the batter will be too thin to be baked into the 9×9″ pan.

So since this recipe has 3 eggs, you would ultimately need 4.5 eggs. And it can be hard to calculate half of an egg. What I like to do is to break the egg, whisk it until the egg yolk and white are mixed together, weigh it, and then add half of the weight into the recipe, along with the other 4 eggs.

Lemon Brownie Variations

Here are some variations to this recipe, and different ways that you can mix it up:

• Use other citrus, such as orange or lime. Use orange zest, orange juice, or lime zest and lime juice instead of lemon.
• Add a dash of almond extract to the batter, 1/4 tsp will do. You can also add a teaspoon vanilla extract too if you so wish.
• Instead of topping the brownies with the glaze, top them with a dusting of powdered sugar, or melted white chocolate.
• Use gluten-free flour instead of regular all-purpose flour, to make these gluten free. Usually any 1-to-1 type of flour substitute will work.

Brownies, blondies or lemon bars

When I first made the Lemon Brownies, I was going back and forth between calling them lemon brownies, or lemon blondies. When I posted them on my instagram stories, some people suggested I’d call them “lemonies”, or even lemon bars.

Here is the thing, blondies don’t have chocolate in them, and lemon bars are an entirely different dessert.

For these to be lemon blondies, they would have to have brown sugar in the batter, and no white chocolate.

And for them to be lemon bars, they would have to feature a shortbread crust, and the filling on top would be made of eggs, sugar, and lemon juice mostly, no butter or white chocolate. Some lemon bars can also be made with sweetened condensed milk too (my personal favorite way of making them).

So brownies is the title that fits them better. But I can also get totally on board with calling them Lemonies.

If you like lemon desserts, you might also enjoy these recipes:

• Lemon Curd
• Limoncello Tiramisu
• Lemon Cookies
• Lemon Poppy Seed Cupcakes
• Coconut Lemon Cake
• Lemon Cheesecake
• Lemon Pie

Thanks for reading! If you make this recipe tag me on instagram or leave a comment below, I love hearing from you!