We Tried The Lemon Bar Cookie From Crumbl

This week at Crumbl, the Lemon Bar Cookie really stuck out to us in our weekly menu roundup as a shining beacon of bright, effervescent flavor in the sea of chocolate and cinnamon monotony. So naturally, when selecting which flavor to taste test this week, it was the obvious option.

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The cookie itself is made with a lemon sugar cookie base that is then topped with a coating of lemon bar topping before getting a sprinkling of powdered sugar for garnish. For as simple as this cookie sounds, these are often some of the flavors that Crumcl struggles with most. So, we knew we would have to see whether or not they were able to execute this one well, or if it’s a skip for your Crumbl cookie order this week. Let’s get into our official Sporked review, shall we?

Our Official Thoughts

Pros — As huge fans of the bright, zingy flavor that lemon bars offer, we were honestly very excited to try this cookie. Even a really basic lemon bar is generally a very satisfying bite, and ultimately that’s exactly what happened here. It was certainly nothing special, but it’s still thoroughly delivered on the intense lemon flavor that it promised and wasn’t overly sour in its execution either.

Aside from the lemon flavor itself, one of our favorite things about lemon bars is the texture that the set lemon filling has. A little bit chewy, a little bit sticky, and oh-so luscious, this cookie’s topping delivered on every texture that we would’ve wanted and expected. That said, this cookie was still far from flawless.

Cons — Despite the success of the surprisingly natural tasting lemon bar topping, my real problem was with the cookie itself. It was dry to the point that it felt chalky and did not have that strong lemon flavor that it promised. Instead, the cookie itself really just tasted like a worse-than-average sugar cookie. And, this is the one opportunity where they could’ve made it a truly balanced experience through the addition of proper seasoning with salt, and yet it fell short in that department.

Not only was the flavor of the cookie not great, but the thickness was all off too. There’s no reason that the cookie needed to be so thick that it not only took away from the experience of the delicious lemon topping, but actually felt ill-representative of the treat that it took inspiration from in the first place.

Our final complaint for this cookie is that they really weren’t made to look very nice. The gloopy nature of the topping makes it understandably difficult to work with, but it the sloppy finish was only highlighted by the sprinkling of powdered sugar. The peaks and valleys of Crumbl’s overall effort in design for certain cookies in contrast with others has disappointed us once again.