Recipe post continued from May 4th 2017
I have been blogging and taking food pictures since 3 years now, and I have been feeling that I need to refresh my pictures! My style has changed, so has the way I decorate my baked goods. So I am reposting this recipe from 2 years ago, with new updated pictures and with the updated recipe. This is one of my all time favorite recipes, and I urge you to try it because one bite is NOT enough! This is an addictive cookie!
I love hibiscus anything, I have been using hibiscus since 3 years, and I get the dried hibiscus flowers from Amazon. The dried hibiscus, has the prettiest pink color, when immersed in milk. I get the freezed dried strawberries from Trader Joe’s and strawberry and hibiscus makes an amazing flavor combination together. You get the fruitiness from the strawberries, and the floral flavor from hibiscus. Hibiscus is a beautiful pink flower, and it was one of my mom’s favorite flowers. We had a lot of hibiscus in our garden growing up, and they have the prettiest stamen too. I didn’t know that you could eat hibiscus, until we went to Mexico and had the most delicious hibiscus margaritas there! I am addicted to this margarita! I usually make mine with strawberry and a hibiscus simple syrup! So delicious!
I added cinnamon, lime juice and lime zest to the cookie dough, to which I added almond flour as well, and it gave the cookie dough an excellent flavor! My family wanted to eat the cookie dough by itself! The cookie dough is spread over the entire jelly roll pan or a 9×13 pan. The buttercream has dried strawberry and hibiscus powder that I ground from the dried flowers and freeze dried strawberries, soaked in warm milk to create this dark pinkish hue, lime juice, salt, butter, powdered sugar. The tequila drizzle is mainly tequila and powdered sugar, that I drizzled on the top with a nozzle bottle to give it a pattern on the top, along with a dusting of the ground hibiscus and strawberry powder. I dressed them up with quarter lime slices. These bars are a breath of fresh air, and a reminder that summer is around the corner! They are a burst of flavor in the mouth and would be perfect to take to a party since I make them in a jelly roll pan and you can make a lot of tiny squares.
I used this cutter from Amazon to get even slices and this is a very useful tool, especially if you make granola bars at home, or any kind of bars. Of even for caramels, chocolate etc.
I loved how the bars look once decorated. I am a sucker for symmetry and I guess that comes from the engineer in me! I love everything squared off, or just even and neat. My desk at work is similar too, all neatly stacked. 🙂
I made these bars for Cinco de Mayo 2 years ago. The post and the previous pictures are here, if you want to take a look! 🙂 The post has numerous ideas from other bloggers for Cinco de Mayo and it is so fun! This year, I am making macarons for Cinco de Mayo and I am looking forward to it! 🙂
If you do make these bars, please do not forget to tag #thejamlab on Instagram, and/or leave a comment on this blog post! I would so appreciate it!
Have a lovely weekend!
XO
Amisha
Lime Cinnamon Cookie Bars with Strawberry-Hibiscus Lime Buttercream and Tequila Drizzle
Ingredients
Cookie Bar:
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 2 tbsp lime juice
- 2 tbsp lime zest
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- ½ cup almond flour
FROSTING:
- 2 stick butter, softened
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- 1 Tablespoon lime juice
- 3 tbsp warm milk
- 2 tbsp dried hibiscus
- 2 tbsp freeze dried strawberry powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Tequila Drizzle:
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 2 tbsp tequila
Garnish:
- Dusting of a mixture of hibiscus and strawberry powder(grind equal amounts of both in a coffee grinder)
- tequila drizzle
- quarter lime slices
Instructions
Cookie Bar:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large mixing bowl, add in the all purpose flour, almond flour, ground cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, salt and whisk to blend. In a large bowl of an artisan mixer, cream butter and sugar together for 2 minutes. Add an egg and beat well for a minute. Add lime juice, lime zest, vanilla extract and mix for a few seconds.
- Spray a 10x15 inch jelly roll pan with vegetable spray. Or you can spray vegetable spray on the tray and line with parchment paper and spray again. Then press dough evenly into it with the palm of your hand and tips of your fingers and even it out smoothly. Bake for 30 minutes until slightly golden in color.
- Remove the tray from the oven. Use a large spatula to flatten and smoothen out the cookie a bit. Cool completely.
HIbiscus-Lime Buttercream:
- In a small bowl, add in the strawberry powder, into the warm and whisk well. aAdd the hibiscus in the warm milk and let it sit for 10 minutes. Squeeze out the juice of the hibiscus so that you get a dark pink milk. In a medium size mixing bowl add all frosting ingredients including the dark pink milk and mix on low for 1 minute. Turn mixer on high and beat until smooth and creamy. Spread frosting over cooled bars and smoothen out with a large spatula.
- Set the bars in the freezer for an hour to get clean square cuts of the bars.
Tequila Drizzle:
- In a small mixing bowl, add in the powdered sugar, and tequila. Mix well to form a smooth thick consistency, where it can be drizzled. Put it in a pastry bag, cut off the tip ever so slightly, OR you could put it in a squeeze bottle and drizzle the mixture over the cookie bar.
- To cut it, remove it from the freezer and gently remove the bar slab using the parchment paper onto a cuttin board. Use a sharp clean knife and a ruler to cut into equal sized squares or rectangles. You can decorate it with the tequila drizzle as well as a dusting of powdered hibiscus and strawberries and a garnish of a quarter of a lime slice.
- Store it in an air tight container in the fridge for upto 3 weeks!
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