White chocolate covered lime coolers

With the unbearably high temperatures we’ve been seeing in DC this summer, I’ve been thinking a lot about citrus-chocolate combinations. I contemplated citrus-infused truffles, but really wanted to bake. I then started exploring citrus cookie recipes, in hopes that some of them might have chocolate. What I found in my 1998 Betty Crocker Cookie Book was a recipe for key lime coolers, which are traditionally covered with a lime glaze. I reasoned that the cookies could instead be covered with white, milk, or dark chocolate. With a recipe for inspiration, the quest began.

Ingredients

1 cup butter

½ cup powdered sugar

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

¼ cup cornstarch

1 tablespoon lime zest

1 teaspoon vanilla*

1 teaspoon lime juice*

*Adjusted from original recipe. The vanilla quantity was increased, the lime juice was added.

After preheating the oven to 350 F, I started with the softened butter and powdered sugar.

I beat those together with an electric mixer (Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer highly recommended).

That resulted in a blend of sugar and fat. Yum! Flour and cornstarch came to the rescue to make it dough-like.

I mixed those in and to arrive at a nice shortbread starter, but it was more or less flavorless. Lime zest and vanilla were supposed to help with that.

Unfortunately, there was minimal lime flavor in the dough. In the cookbook recipe, the glaze called for a good deal of lime juice, so I added a teaspoon of lime juice to the dough account for the fact that these wouldn’t have the lime glaze. The dough was now complete.

The cookbook recipe called for 1-inch balls of dough, but I made 1/2-inch balls to increase the chocolate-cookie ratio.

To flatten the cookies for optimal chocolate-dipping shape, I used a high-tech tool known as “the bottom of a glass,” and dipped it in powdered sugar before compressing the balls of dough.

The result were round, thin-but-not-too-thin cookies. Into the oven for 10 minutes...

They came out of the oven looking pretty good, and then went into the refrigerator for a couple of hours before the chocolate coating began.

Once they were chilled all the way through, I started with the white chocolate. I normally try to use El Rey, because I love Venezuelan-origin chocolate, and also happen to think it’s a good deal, but the store was out of El Rey white chocolate, so Callebaut would have to stand in for the white chocolate this time.

Once I melted the white chocolate, I let it cool a bit so that it would leave a thicker coat on the cookies.

Then it was time to dip and let the final product set on parchment paper.

The lime and white chocolate work nicely together. My only regret is melting too much white chocolate, which meant that I didn’t have enough cookies left to try this with milk or dark chocolate. Next time!