Recipe: Soft and Chewy Sudachi (Japanese Baby Lime) Cookies

Soft and chewy, sweet yet tart—is your mouth watering yet?

Every now and then, I’ll stay up all night experimenting with seasonal fruit, test my patience, and push myself over the daily caloric intake. All for a good cause, I tell myself. Today I’m sharing a success story from a recent series of experiments.

Sudachi cookies. Soft and chewy sudachi cookies.

What’s a sudachi (すだち)? Essentially, it’s a baby lime and a specialty from Tokushima Prefecture. They’re tougher than you’d imagine so getting the juice out of these (good luck) is quite the challenge—I ended up going with pre-packaged, not-from-concentrate 100% sudachi juice.

I’m “this” (air-pinch 1 cm) close from saying these are my new, forever-and-ever favorite cookies. They’re not overwhelmingly, pucker-up tart, but the citrus is definitely there. You can smell it, you can taste it. If you want more of a punch though, I would add another two teaspoons of sudachi juice and just enough flour to avoid making the dough super rubbery.

 

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A post shared by Amya Miller (@amyamillerjp) on Jul 4, 2019 at 7:47pm PDT

Ingredients:

• 225 g (8 oz) cream cheese (softened)
• 300 g (1 ½ cups) sugar
• 1 egg
• 113 g (½ cup) salted butter (softened)
• 280 grams (2 ¼ cups) all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoon (10 ml) sudachi juice
• 1 teaspoon (5 ml) vanilla
• 65 g (½ cup) powdered sugar
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• Another 100g (just under 1 cup) of powdered sugar

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to 180C (or 350F).
2. Mix together the cream cheese, butter, and sugar.
3. Add in the egg, vanilla, and sudachi juice.
4. Sift the flour, powdered sugar, and baking powder together (this will prevent any lumps in the dough).
5. Take the dough and roll it into about the size of a golf ball.
6. The dough is sticky at this point but now roll it into powdered sugar. Once you roll the dough—don’t be shy—it should help the dough become smooth and easy to manipulate.
7. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
8. Bake for 9 minutes or so. Add a minute or two if they haven’t changed color. Keep them in the oven for another 5 minutes after they’re done baking. This will collapse the cookie.

I tried them fresh out of the oven, and the next morning (purely for science, mind you). Personally, I liked them better the next morning. The sudachi is much more settled in and noticeable.

May sudachi become a new staple in your cooking and baking—it’s now my new found secret weapon. You’ll be surprised by how much flavor is packed into each of those little babies. Enjoy!