A meltaway is a soft crumbly cookie that melts in your mouth. These Lime Meltaways are a not too sweet cookie with a tart lime flavor that are dusted with powdered sugar after baking.
There’s a little shop in Key West, Florida, Kermits’s Key West Lime Shoppe, that sells Frozen Key Lime Pie on a stick dipped in Belgian Chocolate. It may sound like an over the top combination, but it’s fabulous.
I fell in love with it one hot day in June while visiting Key West on a cruise stop. I’ve been back to Key West several times since then and always head straight to Kermit’s for this tart but refreshing treat.
Another fun thing about visiting Kermit’s is they always have out samples of their delicious key lime treats. My favorite is a cookie called Key Lime Coolers with “refreshing tropical tartness sprinkled on every cookie.” They are little bite size cookies covered with powdered sugar. A wonderful combination of sweet, tart, buttery and crunchy.
I’d been wanting to try a similar cookie recipe Martha Stewart’s Lime Meltaways since I bought Martha Stewart Cookies earlier this year and when I saw a beautiful bag of key limes at the store I decided to give them a try.
These Lime Meltaways aren’t quite as tart as Kermit’s, but they have the same crunchy/sandy texture and sweet/tart taste that I love. The cookies are small, but a couple satisfies your cookie craving.
Update: I’ve made them several times. Sometimes I’ll make them with key lime juice if it’s available, but usually I make them with ordinary limes. You could even use lemons if you prefer.
Lime Meltaways
Ingredients
- 1 ¾ cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 12 tablespoons 1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
- ⅓ cup powdered sugar
- Grated zest of 2 limes
- 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice or key lime juice
- 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
- ⅔ cup powdered sugar for serving
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cornstarch, and salt. Set aside.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, cream butter and ⅓ cup sugar until fluffy. Add lime zest, juice, and vanilla; beat until fluffy. Add dry ingredients, and mix on low speed until blended.
- Divide the dough in half. Use two 8-by-12-inch pieces of parchment paper to wrap around and shape each half of the dough into 1 ¼-inch-diameter logs. Chill at least 1 hour
- Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment. Remove parchment from logs; slice dough into ¼-inch-thick rounds. Place rounds on baking sheets, spaced 1 inch apart. Bake cookies until barely golden, about 15 minutes.
- Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool slightly, 8 to 10 minutes. Place remaining ⅔ cup powdered sugar in a resealable plastic bag. While still warm, place cookies in the sugar-filled bag; toss to coat. Store baked cookies in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.
More lime recipes you might like:
Chocolate Covered Frozen Key Lime Pie Bites, Barbara Bakes
Key Lime Pound Cake, Barbara Bakes
Key Lime Pie, Barbara Bakes
Raspberry Glazed Key Lime Cake, Lemons for Lulu
Key Lime Pie Breakfast Smoothie, Chelsea’s Messy Apron
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Steve M.
These were flavorless. I literally had to do the following to coax some life out of these cookies:
1) squeeze and grate five extra limes.
2) pour powered sugar into a cup.
3) when the baked cookies were warm, pour a 1/4 teaspoon of the lime juice onto the cookie and let it sit for 30 seconds.
4) dip the cookie into the cup containing the powdered sugar.
5) spinkle a bit of zest for color and for a smidge of extra lime flavor.
These made them come to life and were pretty tasty.
Barbara Schieving
Glad you found a way to make them to your liking. Thanks for sharing Steve.
Deven Leigh Shreve
I made the dough last night and was going to bake them with my 7yr old. I got caught up in reading time and forgot about the dough in the fridge. Now it falls apart when I try to cut it. How can I fix this without throwing it out?
Barbara Schieving
I haven’t tried it but you could probably crumble the dough and add a little more juice until the dough will hold together.
Robin
Is this Recipe affected at elation? I my dough seems pretty dry
Barbara Schieving
It should be affect much by elevation. It’s a dry crumbly shortbread cookie. Knead the dough a little bit and if it holds together in a log, you’re fine. If it doesn’t hold together, try adding a little more juice.
robin
So sorry I meant elevation
Robin
Ok, thank you!!! I’ll try that
A Dash There
Can’t wait to try these! I don’t bake cookies often so what do you mean by roll into a log between the two pieces of parchment paper? Any tips would be appreciated!
Barbara Schieving
I’ve updated the direction so it’s more clear that you’ll use the parchment paper to wrap around each half of the dough and shape it into a log. Martha shows how to wrap it in detail in this video https://www.marthastewart.com/249802/lime-meltaways
A Dash There
Thank you so much!!
Rachel
Super awesome and super easy, so glad I decided to make them! I only had one line, but it made enough juice to make up for the missing zest 🙂 Next time I think I’d do it without the powdered sugar (I used confectioner’s technically but whatever) so the lime can shine through more, but they’re fantastic! My first shortbread style cookie, so I was super pleased with the turnout.
Barbara Schieving
Thanks for the rave review Rachel!
Jane
I just picked a few key limes off my little tree and looked online for a recipe to use them In. I made these and they were just about perfect! They really did have that crumbly sandy texture I love in key lime coolers. Next time I will add a bit more juice to pop the lime flavor.
Barbara Schieving
Hi Jane – so nice to hear you loved the cookies. Instead of adding more juice, I would recommend adding additional lime zest.
Aunt finucane
I had made oat flour using the blender; one step doesn’t state on using flour on the surface; the batter didn’t want to cooperate for the parchment paper!! I had rolled it but it didn’t want be rolled into a log!!!
Barbara Schieving
Oat flour like most whole grain flours absorbs more liquid, so you would use less than all-purpose flour, so it was probably too dry.
Aunt finucane
Too liquidy when I put on the parchment; only used 2 tablespoons but ran out of extract while making; I froze it and glanced at it after working on dirty dishes after dinner; trying to fix the log; totally frozen this late morning and looked like biscotti’s but they would break!! It needed more cooking time due to they where frozen!! But some wanted to fall apart after cutting before the cookie sheet!! Looks like you also have lime as a garnish but doesn’t state reserve some lime peel/zest for a garnish Or add some lime peel/zest to the powder sugar bag!!
Barbara Schieving
I did sprinkle on some lime zest for the pictures to add a pop of color, but the cookies are better without the zest in the poweder sugar, so I didn’t include that in the recipe.
Aunt finucane
Turns out we have no flour; what can I subsitute it with?
annie
look great! My mom loves limes and lemns so im going to make these goo luck!
2 Sisters Recipes
These are my favorite flavor cookies since I was a little girl! Thanks for recipe !! I know what I ‘ll be making it !
I will be pinning this recipe too!!
We just finally got into Pinterest – and social media recently. So we forward to pinning more of your recipes!
Xo Anna and Liz