Key Lime Cookies

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Easy drop cookies bursting with tangy Key lime juice, crunchy graham cracker crumbs, and creamy white chocolate.

The first official week of summer is upon us, so it’s time for some SUMMERY things. And what better to kick off this first week of summer than straight.up.citrus?

I have to admit, these cookies were a serious split decision recipe. As in…

I was updating my Key lime pie bars recipe (check that one out for fresh photos and updated recipe!) and then decided that I wanted to use the leftover juice for cocktails with the neighbors (we did a simple rum + Key lime juice + simple syrup drink + crushed ice situation) and then another recipe.

I turned to the Cookies & Cups cookbook, authored by blogger Shelly Jaronsky, to see if she had some kind of cookie that could cure my Key lime juice “problem.” And she did!

And not only that, when I saw it was a cookie dough that didn’t need to be refrigerated, I was all in.

A quick note on the Key lime juice: I found mine in the cocktail section of the grocery store. You can also find it on Amazon.

And my recipe for Key lime pie bars? There’s a list of recipes from other bloggers around the interwebs you can use some more juice in.

These Key lime cookies are quite simple: the base is made with butter, brown sugar, and lime zest.

Brown sugar brings moisture and also a deeper sweetness to the whole cookie. Combine that with some crunchy graham crackers, and the base of these Key lime cookies is similar to the base of a Key lime pie (or, you know, my Key lime pie bars).

Creaming the zest in with the butter and sugar insures the flavor gets to every single nook and cranny of these cookies. It’s my favorite citrus baking tip!

If you can find Key limes, absolutely use Key lime zest. But if you can’t, regular limes will do just fine.

And if you can’t find Key lime juice, a mix of fresh lemon + fresh lime juice will do the trick. Equal parts of each.

We’ll use one egg yolk to act as the glue for the cookie dough, but we’re leaving the white out of it.

I wanted these cookies to be nice and soft but I didn’t want to give them too much lift (Shelly’s cookies use a whole egg). I also wanted to keep the crunch factor of the graham crackers a bit intact, so keeping the cookies on the less moist and flatter side helped with that.

Shelly drizzles her cookies with white chocolate, but I wanted to put the white chocolate inside the cookies. I used chopped white chocolate, but white chocolate chips work just as nicely. If you’d rather leave out the chips and do some drizzling on the finished cookies, go for it!

We DEVOURED these cookies. We couldn’t stop eating them. And all 18 of them lasted only a handful of days. Kids approved, too! Though they’re easy to please because COOKIES.

The flavor is EXCELLENT. A little tangy, sweet and creamy from the white chocolate, and a buttery finish thanks to the added graham crackers.

I am a gigantic fan of cookies with texture in them, and while there aren’t any giant chunks of graham crackers in these cookies, they do have some unsuspecting crunchy pockets thanks to some perfectly hidden graham cracker chunks.

Matt, the king of cookies, deemed these easy Key lime cookies in the TOP FIVE cookies I’ve ever made. Which is huge, considering my compost cookies are his top favorite cookie of mine ever (they’re epic).

We thought these cookies were different enough that they make a fun addition to a dessert table, but not so different that they might not appeal to the masses. These cookies are straight up THE BOMB DIGGITY.

And I think we might need to get another bottle of Key lime juice just to make them again… And again…

And probably again.