An Adventure With Dried Limes

A few weeks ago, my grandpa and I were talking about dried limes (and how weird they were) and he ended up sending me a package of them. They are the strangest looking things! They are hard and dark brown. They really don’t look like limes anymore. XD

(Also sorry about the horrible pictures. I was too lazy to find my camera, so they’re taken with the phone…)

I tried searching for recipes that used dried limes, but I really didn’t have much luck. Especially when it came to desserts. So I decided I’d have to wing it. Sometimes that turns out great…and other times it doesn’t. *ominous music begins*

I found this basic cupcake recipe and changed a bunch of stuff. I made the cupcakes gluten free, cut out a lot of the sugar, left the graham crackers out, and added dried limes.

I opened the limes and they smelled amazing. Not like fresh limes, but they had a very interesting, pleasant smell. I’m not quite sure what to compare it to.

I started off by grating a bunch of the lime into the batter.

Then I added the flour and added more lime. XD I wasn’t sure how much to use because I had no clue about the potency of the flavor.

After I put the batter in to bake, I started to work on the filling. We didn’t have powdered sugar so I couldn’t make the traditional fillings. So I just made up my own recipe. Cream cheese, stevia, some fresh lime juice and more of the grated limes. I set it aside and worked on a lime syrup.

For the lime syrup (again, just winging all of this, lol) I boiled two of the limes in water until the water was thoroughly infused with the flavor (which was amazing). Then I added a bit of sugar and let that disolve.

The cream cheese mix didn’t have much lime flavor, so I added some of the syrup. It didn’t do much unfortunately.

After the cupcakes were done and cooled, I cut out their centers and filled them with the cream cheese mixture.

Not the prettiest, but eh, who cares, as long as they taste good?

After I’d put them all back together, I drizzled some white chocolate on top and then drizzled the syrup on as well. It was much more liquid-y than I thought it’d be, so it just sank in and disappeared.

The final verdict: good cupcakes, but not much lime flavor. The lime in the cupcakes basically disappeared as soon as they were cooked. The syrup was really good, but it was the only part of the cupcakes that had a really good, strong flavor.

And that was my adventure with dried limes! I’ll be experimenting with more recipes that involve dried limes, so be on the lookout for posts on those!

~Hattush

Have you heard of dried limes? If so, how did you hear about them? Have you ever used dried limes?