Brown Sugar and Lime Shortbread Cookies

Last night, we had dinner with some good friends who we hadn't seen in a while. I was instructed to bring a salad. I made my salad fixins but my heart was yearning for more, something that was a little indulgent and that would make the whole house smell amazing when Sam came home from work. 

I remembered that I happened to have some butter in the fridge. Unfortunately, when I buy butter, I use it as an excuse to make a baked good. This is why I try not to buy butter all that often! But, oh well, I was doomed to make a Tuesday afternoon treat!

I didn't have anything crunchy or chocolatey to throw into a cookie and didn't feel like making boring sugar cookies. I thought, "what uses a lot of the boring ingredients of a sugar cookie but tastes so much better"? Shortbread! 

I wanted to spice up my life a little bit so I pulled out a box of English Breakfast tea. I was just about to dump a couple tablespoons of tea leaves into my shortbread, when I eyed 3 cast aside limes sitting in my produce bowl! Done and done. 

Since I still haven't bought white sugar since I ran out of it [see my last post when I made brown sugar creme brulee], I thought that the lime would pair nicely with the caramelly flavors of the brown sugar mixed with butter!

Brown Sugar and Lime Shortbread Cookies
1 1/2 c. all purpose flour 
1/2 c. corn starch [you can use all flour if you want, the corn starch just contributes to a smooth mouth feel] 
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 c. brown sugar [light or dark]
2 T lime zest
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup of cold butter, cut into large pieces

 You can opt to make this by hand, I happened to use a food processor to speed up the process. 

Place all of your dry ingredients, including your lime zest, into your food processor and pulse for approximately 5 seconds to combine.

Put the butter chunks and vanilla extract into the food processor and pulse the entire dough until it just starts to form a large ball.

Place your dough onto a piece of plastic wrap or waxed paper. Shape the dough into log. Roll the log in the plastic wrap or paper, like a giant Tootsie Roll. Place in the freezer for 20 minutes.

 Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Remove your log from the freezer and slice your log into slices approximately a 1/2 inch in width.

Place your cookie slices onto a nongreased cookie sheet.

Bake for approximately 10 to 12 minutes or until the cookies have begun to turn a little golden brown on top.

These are great as is, or served for tea time or used in ice cream sandwiches. Think how awesome these caramelly lime cookies would taste with some gingery or peach ice cream in between!