Recipe: Xmas Lime Shortbread Cookies

A recipe for sugar-coated Christmas shortbread cookies with so delicious "citrus and vanilla" flavor and aroma ...

Lime Shortbread Cookies
Recipe: A Thinking Stomach {altered version under a CC BY 3.0 US license}
Images: tomatoes and friends {altered version under a CC BY 2.0 license}

INGREDIENTS
3/4 cup unsalted good butter, softened
1 tablespoon finely grated lime rind
the scraped out seeds of one vanilla bean
1/3 cup sugar plus extra
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 and a scant 3/4 cup flour

DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 350.

With your mixer, cream together the butter, lime rind, vanilla bean seeds, sugar and salt until the mixture is light and fluffy. Slowly mix in the flour, just until all the ingredients are completely combined.

Roll dough into 3/4 inch balls and place 12-15 of them spaced regularly on a silicone-or parchment-lined baking sheet.

Pour a couple tablespoons of sugar into a saucer. Take a clean glass with a flat bottom out of the cupboard, smear the bottom of it completely with your greasy hands, then dip the glass bottom in the sugar in the saucer. Use the sugar-coated glass bottom to press the dough balls flat to about 1/4 inch thick. Dip the glass in the sugar again, and repeat on another dough ball. Continue with the rest of the cookie sheet, dipping the glass in the sugar between each.

Place the cookie sheet in the preheated oven. Bake for 10 minutes, then check. Most likely, they won't be done. The cookies usually take about 13-14 minutes to cook for me. You know they are done with the very edges begin to turn toasty-tan. Don't let them cook any longer than that, or the cookies will take on too much of the browned butter taste and lose the citrus and vanilla inflections.

Repeat the process with the remaining dough.

Makes about 30-36 cookies.