I recently bought a bag of key limes at the grocery store on impulse, completely forgetting that I am about to head out of the country for a week. Last night I realized that I had better use the limes for something before I leave town. I decided to try a recipe for Key Lime Sugar Cookies from Nancy's Baggett's The All-American Dessert Book.The first step in the recipe is to combine 4 teaspoons grated key lime zest with 4 teaspoons corn oil and let the mixture sit for at least 30 minutes. I am grateful that I had a persian lime on hand as well as my bag of key limes. Key limes are very small and very thin-skinned. I cannot imagine how many you would have to zest to yield 4 teaspoons. The lime-oil mixture is mixed into the cookie dough, along with 2 and a half tablespoons of concentrated key lime juice (reduced over heat from 6 tablespoons). The dough is rolled out between sheets of parchment and chilled before cutting and baking. After they cookies are cooled, they are decorated with an icing made of powdered sugar and lime juice (and, some food coloring).
I rolled out the cookies quite thin, and they were crisp right out of the oven, but softened a little after cooling. The lime flavor is very strong, but the cookies have a bit of a bitter aftertaste and the frosting is sort of blah. I'm not sure, but I think I may have accidentally caught a bit of the bitter pith (the spongy white layer under the colored peel) in the key lime zest. While the cookies are fun to look at, they were much too much effort, and not nearly tasty enough, to justify making again.I'll be taking a little break from baking while I'm in South America on a business trip, but I hope to blog a bit about my trip when I come back. See you when I get back!
Recipe: "Key Lime Sugar Cookies" from Nancy Baggett's All-American Dessert Book.
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