Dessert Disappointment

Sometimes, Gentle Reader, I wonder if my disasters are my own fault or the fault of, well, a bum recipe. Let's face it--not all recipes are winners. If they were, dear Christopher Kimball and his posse in America's Test Kitchen would be out of work. But, alas, dud recipes lurk out there, and may the FSM bless dear Christopher Kimball and his crew for developing and testing never-fail recipes. And we all know....

I Heart Christopher Kimball

But where the hell is Christopher Kimball and his posses when a faudie really needs them? I really could have used them when making key lime cookies recently.

Not Quite Rolling With the Changes
I came across the key lime cookie recipe over on Allrecipes.com. It's not my BFF when it comes to finding new recipes, but every now and then I find something that intrigues me. The user comments are sometimes insightful, sometimes potentially helpful, sometimes bizarre but usually entertaining for a few minutes.

Perhaps I should have taken the time to read through the comments for this recipe before making it. I do recall seeing that it had earned largely good reviews and multiple stars, but I didn't pay attention to the actual comments. Even now I haven't gone back to see if anyone else had the same problems I had.

And what problems did the Faudie have with this recipe? Let me tell you....

First off, back-to-back recipes with citrus zest is, in a word, painful. At least for me. As you may recall, Gentle Reader, I abraded the pads of my left and right thumbs and index fingers while making zucchini-orange bread earlier this week, marking my first attempt at making fresh zest a literally bloody experience. Naturally, being the utterly brilliant faudie that I am, I was back at the zester less than 24 hours later.

This time, though, I attempted to employ the kitchen tip I'd read in a recent issue of CI for easy zesting, but I didn't find it saved me time or precious zest. While I spared my fingertips further injury simply by scraping off the stuff stuck to the box grater with a bamboo skewer (smart girl, yes I am), I couldn't find any means that I liked of holding the lime while zesting to protect my injured fingers from juice. Oh well, sometimes you must suffer for your passions, right?

The second problem was really the biggest. You see, Gentle Reader, this recipe sells itself as a rolled cookie recipe. Like snickerdoodles and thumbprint cookies. I haven't made a rolled cookie recipe since I made snickerdoodles waaaay back when the husband (before he was the husband and, in fact, before he was the fiance) and I had our apartment in The City Different, so I was looking forward to making some again. Plus I'm a sucker for key lime.

Perhaps using white wheat flour in lieu of all-purpose was my downfall. But in my experience, using this flour tends to make batter and dough drier, but that was exactly the opposite of my experience this time. Instead of dough I could roll, I wound up with, well, pancake batter. There was no way in the FSM's beautiful, bountiful spaghetti bowl that this stuff was ever going to roll.

I whipped out the cookie scoop I first used when making the spicey chocolate chip-zucchini cookies and made the best of the situation as I could. I had visions of the dough running all over the pan as I attempted to scoop it out, but luckily it didn't do that:

Then I had visions of the dough running all over the pan once it went into the oven so that I'd wind up with one big baked mess. Luckily, that didn't happen either:

So while the dough didn't roll, I did end up with decent-looking cookies.

And decent-looking is about all I can say for them. Despite using the fabulous key lime juice that has yielded great key lime flavor in other things (such as our favorite key lime frozen yogurt), these cookies didn't have a distinctive key lime flavor. I'm going to chalk it up to the conflict between the nuttier flavor of the white wheat flavor and the key lime juice, but I really thought that between the zest and the juice, enough key lime flavor would be mixed into the dough. But I was wrong.

If you're interested in trying these cookies out for yourself to prove you're not an idiot like me, here's the recipe.

Rolled Key Lime Cookies1/2 C butter
1 C sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 C all-purpose flour
1 t baking powder
1/2 t NaCl
1/4 C fresh lime juice
1 1/2 t lime zest
1/2 C powdered sugar (for decoration)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
   
2. In a large bowl, cream the butter, sugar, egg and egg yolk until smooth.
   
3. Stir in lime juice and zest.
   
4. In a smaller bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and NaCl, then blend into the creamed mixture.
   
5. Form dough into half-inch balls, and arrange on a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray.
   
6. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on wire racks.
   
7. Sift powdered sugar over cookies while still warm.

Nutrional Info
Calories: 74
Fat: 2.9 g
Protein: 0.8 g
Carbs: 11.4 g
Cholesterol: 19 mg
Fiber: 0.2 g

The Faudie's Futzings

• I used fat-free butter, which might have contributed to the pancake batter-like texture to the dough. However, I really figured that the drier white whole wheat flour would balance out the additional moisture this butter provides.
  
• I used Clabber Girl Sugar Replacer in lieu of regular 'ol sugar. I've never had a problem with this substitution before, but perhaps these rolled cookies need the grainier texture of regular sugar; the Clabber Girl stuff is very powdery, much like, well, powdered sugar.
  
• As I mentioned a few times now, I used white whole wheat instead of good 'ol Gold Medal all-purpose.
  
• Because I used whole wheat flour, I increased the amount of baking powder by half. I don't know enough about baking powder to determine if this might have screwed up the texture of the dough, but I somehow doubt it. But, hey, I'm just a faudie, so what do I know?
  
• Instead of an egg and an egg yolk, I used the equivalent (1/3 cup and 1 tablespoon, I believe) of egg substitute. Perhaps here was my downfall. I understand vaguely that yolks are a thickener, so its absence might have hurt me. Since space in my crummy refrigerator is at a premium thanks to its penchant for freezing anything placed in the back half of it, I don't think I'll be buying real eggs anytime soon. I'll stick with my egg substitute, thank you. Otherwise, I wouldn't have anything to screw up and blog about, eh, Gentle Reader?