This easy 2-ingredient lemon glaze recipe is the perfect topping for muffins, cakes, scones, and more. It takes seconds to stir together and can be customized to your desired consistency.
2-Ingredient Lemon Glaze
This incredibly easy lemon glaze recipe is the perfect topping for everything from blueberry coffee cake or gingerbread muffins! It comes together in seconds with just two ingredients: lemon juice and powdered sugar.
Perfectly tart and sweet, and you’ll find me drizzling this glaze over just about everything. Bookmark this recipe for your next batch of cinnamon rolls or muffins–you can thank me later 😉
Why You’ll Love It
- Just 2 ingredients! You can always enrich the glaze with butter or vanilla if desired, but it tastes great as is.
- Customizable: easily scales up or down and can be made as thick or thin as you want.
- Foolproof: similar to my easy sugar cookie icing, this glaze is impossible to mess up–if it gets too thin, add more sugar. If it’s too thick, add more juice!
- Versatile: it tastes great on so many baked goods! I love it on my lemon poppy seed cookies, blueberry cake, lemon brownies, strawberry muffins, zucchini bread, triple berry scones, king cake, and SO much more.
What You Need:
Only two today; I’ll review them briefly in case you have substitution questions.
- Lemon juice. Fresh or bottled juice is fine, but fresh will have a better lemon flavor–just like when making lemonade!
- Powdered sugar. Also called confectioner’s sugar or 10x sugar. Feel free to sift this if your sugar is lumpy, but I never do; the whisk does a good job making it smooth.
And that’s it! Don’t you love a simple recipe?!
SAM’S TIP: Since this is a lemon glaze recipe, I chose to skip any vanilla extract; however, depending on how I plan to use the glaze, I will sometimes add a very small amount of vanilla for depth of flavor. Too much will bully the lemon flavor though (much like it would in my raspberry buttercream), so stick with a tiny splash (like ⅛ teaspoon).
Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Lemon Glaze
Whisk together the powdered sugar and just 2 tablespoons of the lemon juice. If the glaze is too thick, add more lemon juice a tiny splash at a time until you reach the proper consistency.
When I am using this for drizzling over a cake or scones, I’m looking for the glaze to ribbon off the end of the whisk and hold its shape for a few seconds before dissolving back into the bowl. For dipping muffin tops, it can be a bit thinner.
If you accidentally end up adding too much lemon juice, simply add in a bit more powdered sugar. You really can’t mess this up!
SAM’S TIP: Similar to my vanilla glaze recipe, you can always stir in a tablespoon of melted butter to enrich this glaze. I do this with the glaze for my lemon pound cake, and it’s so good!
Frequently Asked Questions
It won’t harden like a royal icing, but it will solidify after a bit of time. I like to let it firm up before eating, since it’s pretty messy at first.
I omit lemon zest from my recipe because I find it adds an unpleasant texture and doesn’t look as nice, but if that doesn’t bother you feel free to include it. You could also add zest over the glaze on your finished product, if you like!
Nope! The large amount sugar stabilizes it, so it’s fine to stay out of the fridge. However, it will be fine to go in the fridge if your cake/bread needs to be refrigerated.
I was hoping to share this recipe alongside a lemon loaf or a lemon blueberry loaf, but I’m well over a dozen attempts in on each and those recipe still evade me. Soon!
Enjoy!
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An Easy Lemon Glaze Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup (125 g) powdered sugar
- 2-3 Tablespoons lemon juice plus more as needed
Recommended Equipment
Instructions
- Measure out powdered sugar into a bowl or measuring glass. Add 2 Tablespoons lemon juice and whisk well. If mixture seems too thick, add a bit more lemon juice, a splash at a time, until desired thickness is reached. Generally I look for a consistency where, when the whisk is lifted from the glaze, the ribbon that falls holds its shape for a second or two before dissolving back into the bowl.1 cup (125 g) powdered sugar, 2-3 Tablespoons lemon juice
- Drizzle over cooled baked goods. Allow to solidify before serving (optional but less messy!).
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered an estimate only. Actual nutritional content will vary based upon brands used, measuring methods, cooking method, portion sizes, and more.
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