Another crowd-pleasing ‘too many limes’ recipe. The dough for these cookies is so thick and fluffy,
I think making them is just as good as eating (or gifting) them.

Based on Gastronomy Blog’s Orange Spice Cookies (which I have made verbatim — they’re also VERY good.)

Gather:
For the lime-sugar coating:
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 tbsp* lime zest

For the cookies:
2 + 1/3 cups self-raising flour**
1 + 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 + 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp allspice***
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp salt

165 g softened butter
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/3 cup caster sugar

1 egg yolk
3 tbsp lime juice
1/4 cup golden syrup or molasses
1/4 cup maple syrup****

Then:

1. Preheat the oven to 175° C.
2. Put the 1/2 cup of caster sugar for the topping in a medium bowl, add the lime zest, stir will, and set aside.
   
   …
3. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, spices, salt and pepper. Set aside.
4. Juice the limes until you have 3 tablespoons of lime juice. Set aside.
   …
5. In the bowl of your stand mixer (or in a large bowl with hand beaters), cream together the butter, brown sugar and caster sugar.
6. Still mixing, add the egg yolk until combined.
7. Ditto with the lime juice.
8. Ditto with the maple syrup and golden syrup (or molasses).
9. Slow down your mixer/beaters, and add the flour in small portions until fully combined.
   …
10. It’s time to grab a bit of dough and roll it into a ball. The best way I can describe it is ‘the size of a very small lime or a baby Brussels sprout’. Like this:
    
    …
11. Put the sugar-and-zest-covered cookie-dough balls on a baking sheet/tray (they don’t spread a lot so go crazy) and bake for 10 minutes or so — until the cookies have flattened and are dry/golden all over (as they are in that first photo).
12. Allow to cool completely on a cooling rack. They will be quite crispy at the edges/soft in the middle straight after you’ve baked them, but the texture will even out the next day and they should be generally ‘chewy’ all over.

Notes:
I had no trouble making these even though the battery in my kitchen scales is flat, and I didn’t have any plain flour or cloves as required in the original recipe. In other words, these are easy to make and hard to screw up.

*If you don’t have a tonne of limes lying around, the zest of two or three will do just fine.
**I used SR flour because it’s all I had, but the original recipe calls for  plain flour + 1 tsp baking soda. Just use what you’ve got.
***I used allspice because I didn’t have any cloves (I know, I should have gone out to the supermarket at this point!), but either (or half of each) will do.
****If you don’t want to ‘waste’ your maple syrup, another 1/4 cup of golden syrup or molasses will work.