Strawberry Lime Cookies
You may remember those Neapolitan cookies that took over the internet about a year ago, popularized by Pink Door Cookies and Sarah Kieffer of the Vanilla Bean Blog. You know the ones – the tri-colored sugar cookies made with chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry cookie dough swirled together. I’ve always wanted to try a variation on the cookie but didn’t have an idea land in my head until recently. Then the stars aligned and, within 12 hours of finding inspiration, these strawberry lime cookies were cooling on my countertops.
They’re colorful, sweet, sour, chewy, and very reminiscent of a strawberry margarita. While they do require a spice grinder or mini food processor, the dough doesn’t require any chilling time, meaning you can get cookies in your mouth ASAP. Might I suggest pairing them with a poolside cocktail this summer? Just a thought.
The base cookie dough recipe was developed by Sarah Kieffer! If you have her book (and I HIGHLY recommend this excellent book!), this recipe is on page 200. If you’d like to read lots more detail on the recipe, check out her site! Her recipe also includes volume measurements, so if you aren’t baking with a scale (and really, please bake with a scale!) you can get those cup measurements on her page.
If you compare the original recipe with my writeup, you’ll notice that I’ve changed the order of addition. I add all of my dry “small” ingredients to butter before creaming it. I do this with most recipes, and the reason is twofold:
- It ensures that your baking soda and salt are really well blended through the cookie dough and you won’t end up with any unmixed pockets of unpleasant-tasting dry ingredients
- It uses one less bowl! This way, you don’t have to pre-blend your flour and other dry ingredients before adding them to the wet portion of the dough. Just weigh your flour directly from its storage container into the mixing bowl.
A Quick note on order of addition
But Elana, you ask, isn’t there a reason people always mix their baking soda and salt with the flour? My best guess is that it’s traditionally done this way because it makes sense to mix all of your dry ingredients together. In some recipes, there’s also some concern about adding your chemical leaveners (aka baking soda or baking powder) to a dough too early, since there’s a risk that the water in the dough will activate the leavener and the lifting action will start too soon. This is a super valid concern, but I’ll put your mind at ease – there is too little moisture in the butter portion of a cookie dough to activate your baking soda! Butter is only 10-15% water (depending on where you live), which just isn’t enough water to really get the baking soda going. Once you add your egg, however, you’ve added a whole bunch of water (eggs are 90% water!) and you’ll need to finish your dough quickly.
The inspiration
- Cinco de Mayo and strawberry margaritas
- All of Constellation Inspiration’s variations on the classic Neapolitan cookie
- A big ole bag of limes from Sam’s Club
- My love of Sour Patch Kids
The Overview
The Quick Look
| Components | Source/Adapted From | |
| 1 | Base Cookie Dough | Vanilla Bean Blog |
| 2 | Plain Cookie Dough | Vanilla Bean Blog |
| 3 | Strawberry Cookie Dough | Vanilla Bean Blog |
| 4 | Lime Cookie Dough | Vanilla Bean Blog |
| 5 | Sweet & Sour Coating | Lanibakes |
Strawberry Lime Cookies
Ingredients
Base Cookie Dough
- 227 grams unsalted butter room temperature
- 350 grams sugar
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
- 1 egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 365 grams all purpose flour
Plain Cookie Dough
- 340 grams base cookie dough
Strawberry Cookie Dough
- 340 grams base cookie dough
- 8 grams freeze dried strawberries
- 1/2 teaspoon strawberry flavor optional, but really gives the cookie a punch of strawberry flavor
- Pink or red food coloring optional, but necessary for a truly pink dough
Lime Cookie Dough
- 340 grams base cookie dough
- 1 lime
- 5.6 grams True Citrus Lime Powder or 7 packets of True Citrus Lime
- green food coloring optional, but necessary for a green dough. I used Americolor Avocado gel color
Sweet & Sour Coating
- 50 grams sugar
- 4 grams citric acid (1 teaspoon)
Assembly
- Plain cookie dough
- Strawberry cookie dough
- Lime cookie dough
- Sweet & sour coating
Instructions
Base Cookie Dough
- Preheat your oven to 350F.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, add 227 grams butter, 350 grams sugar, 3/4 tsp baking soda, and 1/4 tsp fine salt.
- Using the paddle attachment of your mixer, blend the butter mixture for 2-3 minutes, until starting to get light and fluffy.
- Stop the mixer and add one egg and one egg yolk.
- Mix on medium speed for about 1 minute, until well combined.
- Add 365 grams flour to the mixing bowl and blend on low speed until the flour just disappears into the dough.
- Divide your dough into 3 portions. Each portion will weigh roughly 340 grams.
Plain Cookie Dough
- Set one 340 gram chunk of base cookie dough aside. Cover with an inverted bowl to keep it from drying out while you mix the other dough flavors.
- That's it! You're killing it.
Strawberry Cookie Dough
- In a spice grinder/coffee grinder/small food processor, whiz the freeze dried strawberries to a fine powder.
- In a medium-sized bowl, mix 340 grams of plain cookie dough with 8 grams of strawberry powder.
- Once the dough is almost fully blended with the strawberry powder, add the strawberry flavor and food coloring and mix to fully combine. You can mix with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, or just stick your hands in the bowl and squeeze the dough around until everything is combined (guess which method I use?).
- Set the strawberry dough aside and cover with an inverted bowl to keep the dough from drying out.
Lime Cookie Dough
- In a medium-sized bowl, place the 340 grams of plain cookie dough and the True Lime powder.
- Zest 1 lime into the bowl on top of the cookie dough.
- Add a drop of green food coloring (be judicious here – you’re going for light green, not bright green!)
- Mix to fully combine
Sweet & Sour Coating
- In a small bowl, combine 50 grams of sugar and 4 grams of citric acid.
Assembly
- Preheat your oven to 350°F.
- Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Divide each flavored dough into 15 gram pieces. You’ll get about 22 pieces from each flavor of dough.
- In the palm of one hand, place one piece of plain dough, one piece of strawberry dough, and one piece of lime dough so that the 3 dough balls form a rough triangle (like this!). Squeeze the three balls together lightly so that they form one tri-colored ball.
- Roll the ball between your palms to press the three doughs together.
- Place the dough ball in the small bowl of sweet & sour sugar and toss to fully coat the cookie in sugar mixture.
- Transfer the dough ball to a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
- Repeat steps 3-6 with the remaining dough balls.
- Place 6 dough balls per baking sheet, spaced evenly apart. You’ll have 10 extra cookie dough balls that will need to be baked after you free up your baking sheets and oven racks – set these aside until after the first batch is baked.
- Place the 2 baking sheets into the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes. When they’re done, the dough will still feel soft but will have a matte appearance.
- Let cookies cool on baking sheets for 10 minutes. Then remove cookies and place on a cooling rack. Leave the parchment paper on the trays – you’re about to reuse it!
- Repeat steps 8-10 with the remaining cookies.
Notes
These will be perfect for a party I’m going to. I’ve made Sarah’s version about 3 times and I love them! If I leave out the citric acid would that be a big deal? I don’t have it and would don’t think I’d use it again – thanks.
I’m so excited that you’re going to make them! You can definitely leave out the citrus acid – the cookies will be a little less tart, but still delicious and clearly identifiable as strawberry and lime!
Thanks for your prompt reply. I’ll be making them at the end of the week and will report back – can’t wait to taste this flavor combo!
Just wanted to report back on the cookies. OMG – we love them. The lime flavor was so good with the strawberry (and of course the vanilla too.) I had two packets of the True lime left, so my daughter had the great idea of mixing that with the sugar. So we rolled them in that combination and it was great. Can’t wait to share them today at my family gathering. Thanks for the recipe!
Is there any good substitution if I’m unable to find True Lime?
I haven’t worked with anything other than the True Lime powder, unfortunately. You could probably add about 1/4-1/2 teaspoons citric acid and some lime flavor to mimic the flavor though!
These are A M A Z I N G! They are the perfect combination of sweet, sour, salty, and fruity it’s insane. How do you get them so flat? Mine turned out pretty rounded and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to flatten them before putting them in the oven or not. Either way, an amazing cookie 🤩
Ah that makes me so happy to hear! The flatness could be caused by a number of issues – if your oven runs hotter than mine, it could have solidified the exterior of the cookie before they had time to spread enough. Dough temp going into the oven could cause the same thing! Next time, try bumping your oven temp down about 10 degrees when you bake them!
These are my new favourite cookie. An absolute must try! 10/10
Ahh I’m so happy to hear that!
Can I make the plain cookie dough, freeze it and then continue to make the cookies at a later date?
I haven’t done that, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work! Just wrap it well before freezing. Then let it thaw fully at room temp before making the flavors!
I have made dozens and dozens of cookie recipes and I think these might be the best ever. The lime flavor with the sour coating is INCREDIBLE. Can’t get over how good these are.
What high praise!! Thank you so so much – I’m thrilled you enjoyed them!
These are SO good!! I couldn’t find citric acid (except online, but i wanted to make these cookies NOW) so I just coated them in sugar and they were still amazing, so I bet they’d be even better with the sour coating! All my friends have loved them, my roommate asked for the recipe and is making them next week! Thank you!
I’ve made these twice and it’s a good recipe, and pretty quick to make . The first time, I made it as written without the strawberry flavoring, which was pretty good, but it needed more berry flavor and I didn’t want the outside to taste quite so much like a sour patch kid. The second time, I used raspberries, upped it to 10 grams, and only used 2 grams of citric acid in the rolling sugar. It was perfect.