Pandan Crinkle Cookies with Coconut and Lime
What’s green with snow-like caps and tastes like a tropical vacation? Pandan Crinkle Cookies with Coconut and Lime. These are easy to make and addictingly good.
Pandan
If you aren’t familiar with pandan, I’m here to enlighten you. Pandan is a type of tropical plant grown in Southeast Asia. Its leaves are a food flavoring in Indonesia, Malaysia, Phillippines, Singapore, and Sri Lanka.
I spent most of my childhood in the Pacific, living in Guam and Hawaii. Many of my Filipino friends brought pandan-flavored cakes and sweets to fiestas and potlucks. The flavor is subtly sweet and grassy with mild vanilla-y notes.
It’s hard to describe, but it’s lovely.
You can make your own pandan flavoring, of course. I’ve even found packages of pandan leaves in the frozen food section at my local Asian market. But it’s easy to purchase pandan flavoring on Amazon or at most Asian food stores.
Pandan appears in both savory and sweet dishes. Most often it is added to rice and chicken dishes. But I really love it in cookies.
Crinkle Cookies
I had a friend whose mom would bake chocolate crinkle cookies every holiday season. They were so pretty and so delicious. Plus, they looked like they were topped with snow!
Crinkle cookies are so named because they have a crinkly, crackly look. The dough gets rolled in powdered sugar before baking. Through the magic of the oven, the dough puffs and bakes, peeking out from the powdered sugar veneer.
Chocolate crinkle cookies are the OG, of course, but variations like red velvet, lemon, and sprinkle crinkles have become very popular. This recipe combines pandan, coconut, and lime for a unique crinkle cookie. These pandan cookies deserve a spot on your holiday cookie tray, as do these.
Lessons Learned
- Pandan flavoring and extract aren’t always the same across brands. If you are purchasing a natural extract, the green color will be more subtle than the ones with artificial color added. Yes, I went for the artificial coloring because I wanted these babies to be vibrant green, not sage green.
- This is a thick and sticky dough. To help the dough firm up a little, I let it chill in the fridge for 15-ish minutes.
- When you plop the dough into the powdered sugar, it will not be a perfect ball. Once the dough is coated in the sugar, you can gently roll it between your palms to make it round.
Hat Tips
Many thanks to Dessert Now Dinner Later for the coconut lime crinkle cookie recipe.
Pandan Crinkle Cookies with Coconut and Lime
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Chill Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 12 minutes
- Total Time: 47 minutes
Ingredients
- ½ cup butter, softened at room temperature
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- ¼ cup lime juice
- 1 tsp lime zest
- ½ cup unsweetened dried coconut flakes
- 1 tsp pandan flavoring
- ½ tsp coconut extract
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ cup powdered sugar for dredging
Instructions
- Beat the butter and sugar together in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment until combined and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat after each addition.
- Tip in the lime juice, lime zest, coconut flakes, pandan flavoring, coconut extract, and vanilla extract. Mix in with the butter mixture until combined.
- Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add flour mixture by the cupful into the butter mixture and beat together on low speed. Once you have added all the flour, mix until everything is incorporated. The dough will be thick and sticky. Place the mixing bowl in the fridge and let it chill for 15 to 20 minutes.
- Turn on the oven to 350 F/176 C. Line two rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside. Pour the powdered sugar into a shallow bowl and set aside.
- Using a small cookie scoop or ⅛ cup measuring cup (equals around 2 tablespoon of dough), drop a lump of dough into the powdered sugar. Using both hands, lightly roll the dough into the sugar until it is coated and gently roll it into a ball. Place on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with the rest of the dough. Dough balls should be 2 inches apart.
- Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until the outer edges of the cookie are set. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes in the pan. Transfer cookies to a wire rack and allow them to cool completely if you can. Makes around 26 cookies.
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