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Today I thought we’d take a trip back down into the blog’s archives torevisit one of myall-timefavoritecookie recipes.
I actually posted the recipe for these cookies back in my very first year of blogging, and they’ve beengetting progressively buried in our cookie archives ever since. But I still make them every single year around the holidays, and can hardly believetheir buttery, citrusy, sweet goodness each time I do. They are just the best!!!
Even better, they’re super nice and sturdy, which has madethem my go-to recipe for cookie exchanges over the years. I must admit — I have received many a box over the years that has been full of cookiecrumbles, especially when shipped through the mail system. But when packed correctly, I promise that these cookie will hold up well even when being shipped across the country, or carried in a toddler’s wobbly pathdown the street to a neighbor. :) I’ve given them out for years, and they always receive rave reviews.
So, as is my annual tradition, a friend and I actually made a quadruple batch of these this month to get ready for the holiday season. Half of mine were packed up to give out as part of theWorld’s Largest Cookie Exchange that I’m participating in withBetter Homes & Gardens,and half went in the freezer to have on hand for last-minute holiday gatherings and such. (Ok, actually we couldn’t wait and some friendshelped demolish a few dozen of them early while cheering on our Royals during the World Series, which Ihave to think helped contribute to their sweet win, right?! Right.)
So let’s make some more together, and spread the sweet cookie love!
Alright, well first off, I want to give credit where credit is due. I actually received this recipe after begging for it at a bridal shower 6 years ago with my friend, Amy. Her aunt, Bonnie, is a fantastic bakerand always goes all-out making amazing spreads of sweets and bars and cookies for parties. And at this particular shower, the fruity-dessert lover in me was immediately drawn to the cute little handwritten sign that saidcoconut-lime shortbread cookies.
In the middle of the freezing winter in Kansas, these sounded like a taste of no less than tropical paradise.
Buttery shortbread cookies baked with a good hint of lime and toasted coconut…then topped with a sweet lime glaze…how could you go wrong?!
The answer is that you can’t. :)
You absolutely can’t go wrong with these.
And because of that, I highly recommend making a double or triple batch of these if you can. Shortbread cookies are a bit of a time commitment either way, so if you’re going to go to the work, I always vote that you might as well make extras tofreeze or give away. (And a quick note — if you aren’t going to eat them right away, I recommend stirring the lime zest into the glaze as pictured above, instead of sprinkling it on top.)
But if you are going to eat them fairly quickly, I love the look of that bright green zest topping each cookie like confetti. So cute!
As I mentioned above, I packed up a few little boxes of these to give away this year as part of The World’s Largest Cookie Exchange withBetter Homes & Gardens, which you can join too if you’re interested! They have all sorts of great little free printable holiday gift tags an recipe cardsonline,as well as hundreds and hundreds of other cookie recipes that you can browse for inspiration.
So if you’re needing some simple (and inexpensive) homemade gifts to give out this year, I highly recommend getting involved and giving the gift of something homemade from your kitchen. I have some more great DIY homemade projects coming up on the blog this month, too, so stay tuned for more ideas.
Cheers to sharing the homemade cookie love!
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Coconut Lime Shortbread Cookies
5 Stars4 Stars3 Stars2 Stars1 Star4.6 from 13 reviews
These Coconut Lime Shortbread Cookies are perfectly light, sweet, buttery, and full of fresh lime and coconut flavor!
Ingredients
Scale
Coconut Lime Shortbread Cookie Ingredients:
1/2 cup shreddedcoconut, toasted
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons limezest
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup (2 sticks) cold butter, cut into 1-tablespoon pieces
Lime Glaze Ingredients:
2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon limezest
1 tablespoon lime juice
2–3 tablespoons water
Instructions
To Make The Coconut Lime Shortbread Cookies:
Preheat oven to 325°F.
In a food processor, combine coconut, sugar, lime zest, and the vanilla extract. Pulsea few times until the coconut is finely chopped. Add flour, and pulse until combined. Gradually add in the butter pieces and pulse until the mixture is smooth and combined. (The dough will appear fairly dry.)
Transfer to a very large bowl, and knead dough until smooth. (If the dough is still too dry and crumbly, add in a half teaspoon of water at a time until it clings together.) Shape dough into a ball, then divide in half.
On a lightly floured surface, roll out one of the dough portions toabout 1/4-inch thickness. Using your desired cookie cutters (I used a 1.5-inch round cutter), cut out dough. Place cutouts 1″ apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
Repeat with the remaining dough on a second cookie sheet.
Bake for 15-17 minutes, or just until bottoms start to brown. Transfer cookies to a wire rack, and let cool to room temperature.
Drizzle each cookie with the lime glaze, adding extra lime zest on top if desired.
To Make Lime Glaze:
In a small bowl, whisk together powdered sugar, lime peel, and lime juice until combined. Add in the two or three tablespoons of water, and whisk until it reaches a good consistency for spreading.
Cornstarch provides the shortbread with structure, but its biggest job is keeping the cookies extra soft, tender, and light. I love adding a small amount to chocolate chip cookies too. Optional Coarse Sugar Topping: For an optional sparkly crunch on your shortbread wedges, add a sprinkle of coarse sugar before baking.
Shortbread should always have a tender, melting texture, but be slightly crisp when you bite into it. It should not generally be damp or wet underneath. A classic shortbread recipe will also only have flour, butter and sugar as the ingredients (in a 3:2:1 ratio) and not egg, which could lead to excess moisture.
Eggs: Butter cookies and sugar cookies typically contain eggs, while shortbread cookies can be made with or without eggs. The egg makes the dough more pliable and less crumbly. Texture: Sugar cookies have a more moist texture than butter cookies, and shortbread is more crumbly than butter cookies.
Sugar cookies tend to be firmer but lighter, and are better for cookie-cutter shapes and decorating. Shortbread is softer and more crumbly. Not great for decorating, but if you bake it in a pan deeper than the dough, add soft-set caramel and chocolate on top, you get Millionaire's Shortbread, AKA homemade Twix.
Traditional Scottish shortbread is a simple recipe made with sugar, butter, flour, and salt. Other shortbread styles will include leavening agents like baking powder and baking soda, which makes them crisp instead of crumbly like traditional Scottish shortbread.
The most common mistakes when making shortbread are over-working the dough, and incorporating too much flour. The less you work the dough, the more crumbly and melt-in-your-mouth your shortbread cookies will be.
The key with shortbread is not to overhandle it. Make the dough exactly as instructed, but don't mess around making shapes or over rolling the dough - you will end up with delicious but tough biscuits. Stretching and pulling the dough activates the gluten in the flour, making chewy cookies and not crisp ones.
Greasy mess: Extra butter means more fat, making the dough greasy and difficult to handle. Spreading like crazy: Cookies lose their shape, spreading thin and flat instead of staying nice and round. Uneven baking: The excess fat can burn easily on the edges while leaving the center undercooked.
These days salted butter is of equal quality to unsalted, however using unsalted butter allows you to control the amount of salt in the cookies which enhances the flavour but can be overpowering in a delicately flavoured cookie. Christmas baking is a lot of work - to get the best results use the best ingredients.
If you're wondering why recipes usually call for unsalted butter even though they just add the salt back in it's because different brands of butter use different amounts of salt. Calling for unsalted butter is just a way of helping to ensure similar results no matter which brands of ingredients you use.
Spritz cookies are tender and have an enriched dough.
You can take most spritz cookie and shortbread recipes and side by side the only difference in ingredients is a single egg. An egg doesn't seem like anything extraordinary, but in a recipe with only four other ingredients, that single egg changes a lot.
Should butter be cold or room temperature for making shortbread? Always start with cold butter straight from the refrigerator. This will keep the dough from warming up, making it greasy and difficult to roll out.
Shortbread is called short because of the traditional ratio of one part sugar to two parts butter that lends a high fat content to the dough. This yields a soft, buttery crumb that melts in your mouth, similar to short crust pastry. This ratio is also what makes shortbread so crave-worthy.
If you don't have cornstarch on hand, there are a few alternative steps you can take to produce the cookie of your dreams. Go heavy on brown sugar. It has more moisture than its granulated counterpart, which means the cookie comes out less crispy. Unsurprisingly, more liquid retention guarantees a softer bite.
What does cornstarch do in cookies? Like in this case, when the amount of cornstarch is higher than the flour, the texture of the cookies will get more crumbly, favoring that melt-in-the-mouth texture that we all love.
You can use all-purpose flour in place of cornstarch in a baking recipe, but be warned: The texture won't be as soft and tender. Rice flour works especially well as a sub for cornstarch in cookie recipes and potato starch is a good replacement in cake recipes.
You can always substitute all-purpose flour in nearly all baking recipes that call for cornstarch, but you might miss out on some of that delightfully airy texture in whatever you're baking. Rice flour is particularly great in a shortbread and other cookies as it makes for a super delicate dough.
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Introduction: My name is Jerrold Considine, I am a combative, cheerful, encouraging, happy, enthusiastic, funny, kind person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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