Harpie’s Goodie Basket A recipe repository for those tasty cookies, cakes, breads, bars and other desserts you’ve come to enjoy during the holidays—and beyond

Key Lime Cookies

A lime explosion in your mouth, these sinfully sweet desserts make it hard to stop at just one.

I decided to use rice flour rather than wheat in this recipe, and the resultant cookie hardly held together. However, by adding wheat flour 1/4 cup at a time until the consistency thickened a bit (probably about 3/4 cup extra), I found a happy medium that was still extremely moist but delicious. Please read the Notes for several other helpful hints to make these cookies successful, because the end flavor is worth it.

The recipe I based mine on (with a little tweaking assistance from site users) was Dionna Hurt’s winning recipe  from the Food Network Cookie Challenge, found at their website. A variation on the same theme, Key Lime Meltaways , was published by Alison Ladman, of The Associated Press, in the December 2, 2009, edition of The Seattle Times online.

Ingredients

• 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup Key lime juice, fresh or bottled (regular lime juice may be substituted)
• Lime zest
• 3 cups rice flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
• 2 cups Key lime curd
• 1 cup powdered sugar, for sprinkling
• 1/4 to 1 cup wheat flour (optional)
• 3–5 drops green food coloring (optional)

Preparation

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, with an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and the lime juice, and mix well.
3. In separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Gradually add the flour mixture to butter mixture until incorporated. Dough should be stiff but not dry.
4. Shape into 1-inch balls, press thumb into center of balls to make an indentation, being careful not to press through to the bottom. Fill indentations with about 1 tablespoon Key lime curd.
5. Bake for 15 minutes, until lightly brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Notes

• To avoid tackiness of dough, dip fingers in sugar, or use a small cookie scoop (2 teaspoons) dipped in sugar.
• Add more flour to make the dough less tacky and to better hold its form while baking.
• Green food dye, though not necessary, will make the cookies’ color pop.
• Alternate baking possibilities:
  • Use parchment and take them out of the oven after about 13 minutes—just before they start to brown.
  • Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes.
• Alternatives to Key lime curd filling:
  • Frost with a mixture of confectioner’s sugar, Key lime juice and some Key lime zest.
  • 1 cup coconut flakes.

Yields 3 dozen cookies