Why You’ll Love My Key Lime Cookies
All the flavors of key lime pie without the wait! No waiting hours for it to firm up in the fridge. Can be made with bottled or fresh key lime juice. There’s no need to search high and low for real key limes if they aren’t easily accessible to you! Simple & fuss-free. My technique of shaping the dough BEFORE chilling means these cookies are easy to roll and hold their shape in the oven. So often thumbprint cookies will spread and lose their shape, but not these! Just so cute! These cookies make the perfect bite-sized dessert for summer parties or cookouts.
These cookies are based off of my popular thumbprint cookies, but today we’re using a tart key lime filling instead of jam. We’ll also incorporate some graham cracker crumbs into the cookie dough itself for even more flavor (and key lime pie vibes!).
What You Need
Most of these ingredients should be familiar to you, but I will review a few before we dig in.
Key lime juice. It’s important to use key lime juice and not regular lime juice when making your filling, otherwise the flavor won’t be quite right. You can use fresh-squeezed or bottled juice (I like Nellie & Joe’s Key West Lime Juice!). However, for the zest you can get away with using either regular lime zest or key lime zest. White chocolate chips. These will help form the base for our filling. I recommend you stick with a higher quality brand (like Ghiradelli) for the best results. Graham cracker crumbs. These are an essential addition for a key lime feel, we’ll mix them into the cookie dough where they’ll add a subtle but present flavor. Sweetened condensed milk. Make sure you use sweetened condensed milk and not evaporated milk, as they will not work the same. Unfortunately they are sold right next to each other, so it can be easy to make the mistake of grabbing the wrong one. You will have some leftover condensed milk after making the filling; feel free to make dulce de leche or use it as a coffee creamer. Cornstarch. Cornstarch helps our cookie dough hold its thumbprint shape and prevents the cookies from spreading too much in the oven.
SAM’S TIP: Chilling the dough is important, especially if you make your key lime cookies on a hot summer day. However, make sure that you roll and indent your cookies before chilling the dough. This method prevents cracks from forming in your cookies (since the dough is more pliable!). After the cookies have baked, re-indent them with the back of a teaspoon. Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Key Lime Cookies
SAM’S TIP: If your key lime cookies turn out dry and crumbly, there’s a pretty good chance you over-measured your flour. I have a whole post on how to measure flour, if you’ve run into this issue before I’d definitely recommend checking that out. If you’re looking for more fun twists on classic key lime (or more ways to use up a bottle of key lime juice), check out my key lime pie cake or key lime cheesecake next. Enjoy! Let’s bake together! Subscribe to my newsletter to be notified of all the newest recipes, and find my free recipe tutorials on YouTube 💜 This key lime cookie recipe was originally published 06/06/2018, post updated 05/13/2019
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