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Deliciously easy lemon poppyseed cookies with white chocolate chips, stuffed with a lemon curd centre

A cookie based on a classic bake, lemon poppyseed cookies are delightful and fresh, especially when you stuff them with a homemade lemon curd.

Lemon and poppyseed bakes

I would say that lemon and poppyseed is one of the most famous flavour combinations when it comes to a fruit bake. Iconically, you usually find a lemon and poppyseed muffin in almost every coffee shop, and I have a great fondness for them.

I have made some lemon and poppyseed cupcakes and a lemon and poppyseed bundt cake on this blog, a long time ago, and I randomly wanted to create a recipe inspired by bakes like this; these lemon poppyseed cookies.

Any bake like this provides the zingy fresh flavour that you are after from a lemon flavoured baked, with an extra element of the poppyseeds. They add a natural slight nuttiness to a bake, as well as a texture that personally I adore.

Cookies

I do keep posting cookie recipes, and I keep mentioning that I keep posting cookie recipes. I just don’t think that I am going to be able to stop this obsession any time soon. A few weeks ago I shared my pistachio nyc cookies that are stuffed with my homemade pistachio spread, and I just got yet another hankering for a stuffed cookie. Seeing as I also shared my almond croissant cookies recently, that were also stuffed cookies, a third seemed perfect.

These cookies follow a similar trend in size, and type of cookie dough. These naturally bake a little flatter sometimes because of the lemon curd (it never freezes as solid) but the cookie dough itself is super similar.

Cookie dough

As mentioned above, the cookie dough is similar to a degree, as with most of my cookies because I simply adore the base cookie dough. So many thousands and thousands of you have made these cookie based recipes now, I wanted to make sure to stick to the same classic bake.

Butter – I use fridge-cold baking spread or room-temperature block butter, but either works well. You can use salted butter if that is what you prefer in baking, and then leave out the salt.
Sugar – A blend of granulated sugar and light brown soft sugar enhances the flavour and gives the cookies a rich taste – but you can use all of one, or all of the other.
Egg – I usually bake with medium eggs, but you can substitute with one large egg if that’s what you have on hand.
Flavours – I wanted these to be super lemon flavoured, so I used the zest of two lemons. It may seem like a lot for 10 cookies, but it was delightful. You can substitute this for 1-2tsps of lemon extract, but I would avoid using lemon juice.
Flour – Always use plain flour for your cookies! Self-raising flour will result in a cake like texture, which you want to avoid. However, you can sue self raising flour, leave out the baking powder, and still use the bicarbonate of soda. On this occasion, I also added in cornflour, but you can sub this for 25g more flour.
Raising Agents – I use both bicarbonate of soda and baking powder. Bicarbonate of soda is the traditional choice for cookies, while baking powder helps achieve the signature texture of a cookie that we are after
Salt – I add sea salt to my cookie dough because it enhances the flavours, but you can skip it or use salted butter if you prefer – or leave it out in entirely.

Chocolate & poppyseeds

For these, and because I have an obsession, I add chocolate. I wanted to add chocolate because I like it, but you really don’t have to. Lots of other lemon and poppyseed cookies don’t have chocolate added in. I opted for white chocolate as I find it worked best with the lemon flavour.

For the poppyseeds, which is arguably half of the most important part of the recipe idea, you can add as much or as little as you want. Generally I found 10-30g the best, as they do go quite far and it can definitely become too much. I usually add about 20g for the best quantity and spread through the cookies.

To stuff or not to stuff

For these cookies, as mentioned above, I wanted to make them a stuffed cookie recipe. I will say from the start that this one is a little trickier as I don’t find lemon curd can freeze completely solid like most spreads can. Because it has such a high sugar content, it basically becomes thicker or easier to manipulate – but still a little soft. I did use scoops of my homemade lemon curd recipe, but most shop bought ones work.

It’s best, if you want to stuff the cookies, to freeze the lemon curd overnight. When you go to stuff the cookies, you want to flatten the cookie dough in your hand, carefully add in the lemon curd (I use a spoon for this) and then wrap the cookie dough around. If you leave any gaps, the curd may seem out – but I don’t really worry about this too much.

It is also totally fine to not stuff these cookies. This batch makes 10 delicious cookies that I LOVE even without the lemon curd in the middle.

How to make this recipe Free-From

Here is a little how-to make this recipe free-from. I haven’t always tested these this way, so this is a guide for those who bake free-from on the regular or want to try something new. Inevitably changing the core recipe can create changes in texture and end result due to differences in ingredients.

Gluten free – Swap the flour to gluten free plain flour (make sure all other ingredients are gluten free). For texture, you can add 1/4tsp xanthan gum per 150g of flour if it doesn’t already contain it
Dairy free – Swap the butter to a dairy free butter, and make sure the chocolate is dairy free or leave it out
Vegan – Same as above, but swap the egg for 75ml of vegan milk – check all other ingredients

Tips & tricks

These cookies will last for 4+days at room temperature or in the fridge
These cookies will freeze for 3+ months
If you want to make these smaller, I’d suggest skipping stuffing them as it probably won’t work (too messy/exploding cookies). Use a 5cm scoop and bake for 9 minutes for smaller cookies (makes about 15)
I use this homemade lemon curd recipe
The raw cookie dough will last 48 hours in the fridge before baking
The raw cookie dough can also freeze for 3+ months. You just need to add 1-2 minutes baking time to bake from frozen