Saturday, March 24, 2007

I'll stop the world and melt with you



So here I am, armed with nothing more than a cuppa organic green tea and some John Mayer, my laptop snugly resting on my lap (no pun intended) and my swanky little Olympus camera uploading photos of my latest baking adventure and it's a saturday night. I rather enjoy the feeling of sitting homealone and baking, then slowly cleaning up and doing nothing really. The excuse for sitting back and doing nothing is that I've completed part one of my essay so yes, here's a break for me! =) Back in the race tomorrow.

Anyway, like I said before, I'm sick of cupcakes. I want something small-er and crunchy, simple and home-y and wickedly buttery and melty...yeah you get my drift. So amidst my research on the Cold War (don't ask...), I decided to search for recipes that used limes. I'm going through this thing called a lime-phase as my sister so aptly puts it. So today I had Lime marinated chicken for lunch and now I am proud to say that I have just baked Lime Meltaways courtesy of Darby Field Inn and Restaurant in Albany, New Hampshire.

The cookie batter was relatively easy to work with, meaning it wasn't too difficult to stir it about though it bordered on the 'alittletoosticky' side, but nothing a little oil on your hands wouldn't fix! The recipe calls to chill for an hour, I got lazy to wait and I was hungry so i chucked it in the fridge for 10 minutes and took it out to slice. Obviously leaving it in there for the stated amount of time would result in evenly shaped cookies but hey, mine weren't all that ugly, just had to use my fingers to flatten them abit. heh, hey! YOUR HANDS ARE USEFUL! =)

Oh yes, yesterday Fred and I happened to chance upon this Indian supermarket so I decided to look around while he decided on which mint he wanted.. peppermint or spearmint? I FOUND ROSE WATER! Figuring I'll never stumble on this place again I decided to get it! So, I took half of the cookie batter and mixed it with 3/4 tsp of rose water to try it out. The rose taste and smell was light, so maybe I might increase it the next time, but they did taste so pretty when i dipped with cookies in icing sugar. Like turkish delight and cookies all beautifully laced in one. OOOH. and I tinted the batter a light pink, talk about being girly. =)

Lime Meltaways
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup icing sugar
2 tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice
1 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp flour (I used Spelt flour)
2 tbsp cornstarch
zest of 2 limes
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1 pinch of salt

1)Cream butter and 1/3 cup icing sugar until fluffy (it wont be as fluffy as a typical creamed butter&sugar mixture, remember you're using icing sugar)
2)Add lime, zest and vanilla and beat until fluffy
3)In another bowl, sift flours and salt
4)Add the flour mixture into the creamed butter and mix well
5)Between 2 8 by 12 inch baking paper, roll dough into 2 1/4 inch diameter log and chill for one hour
6)Heat oven to 170degree celciusm slice logs into 1/8 inch thick rounds and bake for 12-15 mins (barely golden)
7)cool the cookies (abt 10 mins) and put them in the remaining icing sugar and coat
*Read on for easy way outs!

OKAY! being the lazy bum that I am, I didn't bother measuring what the diameter of the logs were, I just rolled them to a size that I would like (about 2 mouthfuls) and sliced them to a thickness that I found easy to handle. I mean, I flattened them with my fingers after lining them on the baking sheet so I suppose it doesn't really matter. Unless you're a perfectionist. In which case, I'm not.=) heh. So yeah, It's about the FEELING. lol, gut-feeling. I found the cookies UN-lime-y enough so i made a glaze.

Lime Glaze
5 tbsp lime juice
Icing sugar (1-1 1/2 cups)

1) Mix well until the consistency that you like, adding more sugar if a thicker consistency is desired. Oh yes, and dont dip the cookies into the icing sugar if you decide to glaze them. I personally like 'em glazed better. SUGAR-SWEETGLAAAAZE. =)

2 comments:

Nickster said...

one word - won-der-ful! boo, i'm a great biggg fan. no relation to victoria, at all. please upload one of your photos! would love to see how you look like in person (: cheers.

Victoria said...

babboonyim, how lovely.=) thanks for the support. you're one cool potato.