Baked and frosted Key Lime Sugar Cookies
I know! They totally look like they should taste good, right? But they just don't.
The recipe comes from Nancy Baggett's The All-American Dessert Book. It's only the second recipe I've made from the book--the first produced some decent-but-nothing-special fudgy brownies--but these were downright disappointing.
Baggett's The All-American Dessert Book
The Key Lime Sugar Cookies had two flaws: 1) bitterness, and 2) bad texture. The bitterness could have come from several sources. The recipe calls for lemon extract (which smelled foul to me), lime zest steeped in vegetable oil, and reduced lime juice (which also smelled repugnant as I heated it on the stove). One (or perhaps all) of these ingredients made my cookies taste bitter instead of sweet or fragrant like I had expected. It's possible that I bought a bad lime or that reducing the lime juice burned it somehow (though the recipe implied that this was not possible).
Lime zest in oil and reduced lime juice.
The texture of the baked cookies was strange and unappealing. They were hard and sort of gummy, not crispy or soft and powdery (which is what their appearance led me to expect). Which isn't to say they were inedible: the texture seemed correct (neither over- nor undercooked), but just unappealingly dense.
The recipe also made very little dough and surprisingly few cookies.
Two little fist-shaped dough balls.
However, rolling out and chilling the dough in sheets was a fun departure from my usual cookie baking process.
Rolled out dough, ready for the fridge.
The little "pills" that soon became lime wedges.
Lime wedges ready for the oven.
I wasn't even in love with the frosting. With nothing but powdered sugar and lime juice in the mix, it was one-note and sweet without having any depth. And I wasn't very good at frosting my cookies all pretty-like. So they just got wiggles. So there!
Wiggly little wedges.
Anyway, despite their slightly wonky appearance, I deny any wrongdoing in the botching of this recipe! Why? Well, if only the texture or only the flavor was bad, I could blame it on incompetence. It's possible that I got some proportions wrong, or I burnt the lime juice or bought a bad lime, but I'm a good enough baker that I don't think I would make two major mistakes big enough to ruin a whole recipe!
So now what do I do with The All-American Dessert Book? Will I let two recipes ruin it for me, or will I give it another chance? Only time--and probably this blog!--will tell!
4 comments:
as she flew out the door this AM headed to her cafe job, I asked how the cookies turned out? "AWFUL!" came her reply....... with a response like that, I couldn't even bring myself to taste test them! They looked pretty thought! Better luck next time girlie!
Gosh, I am so sorry to hear that the cookies from my book didn't work out for you. I agree that it doesn't sound like you did anything wrong. I do wonder if the limes you got were just excessively bitter--obviously I wouldn't have created a recipe that tasted bitter deliberately. While I'm not a fan of lemon extract used alone, I do find it usually adds an nice boost to lemon and lime cookies. So I'm not sure why it seemed so unpleasant.
In case you're wondering, I tested the recipe a number of times. I guess you were just expecting something else. Anyway, I think the cookies actually look very pretty.
You didn't mention the name of the other cookie. If you want to e-mail me I'm happy to give suggestions.
humm, they sound pretty good and I'm game to try making them if you'd lend me the recipe. Limes are not created equal, some are bitter. Nice to see Nancy found out about those cookies all the way to OOOlathe! (I used to think what goes on in O stays in O)lol
Hmmm, Sandy, I think you may be right! I only used the zest (not the juice--I bought that bottled) from my lime for this recipe--perhaps I just got a bad one!
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