Cubicle kitchen: Crunchy Coconut Lime Cookie Cups

One of the things I love about baking is that there's an infinite number of possibilities.  When you walk into the kitchen, you can not only mix and match the ingredients, you can also switch up how you bake them to create something new each time.

Last week, I made two treats from three main ingredients:

• Coconut
• Lime
• Chex cereal

These cookie cups are the first result.  The Chex adds a crunch to what is basically a sugar cookie recipe that is pressed into a mini cupcake pan to create little tartlets.  The filling I just kind of threw together, adding powdered sugar and corn starch to thicken up the condensed milk a little more so that you can safely take two bites to eat them without losing any of the creamy gooey deliciousness.  Then the coconut and lime comes in to make these a tasty way to ease into the realization that it's practically already summer and where is the year going?

Plus extra crushed Chex, because more Chex means more crunch, and more crunch is always good.

Crunchy Coconut Lime Cookie Cups
Makes 4 dozen

Ingredients

Cookie cups:

• 1 cup butter, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups flour
• 4 cups Chex cereal*, crushed (ended up measuring about 2 1/2 cups when crushed)

Filling:

• 1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
• 3/4 cup shredded coconut
• juice and zest of one lime
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 2 Tablespoons corn starch
• 1 cup Chex cereal, crushed*

*I mixed equal parts Rice and Corn Chex

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs and extract and combine.
3. Add the baking powder, salt, and flour to the wet batter and mix just until combined.  Mix in crushed cereal.
4. In a well-greased mini cupcake pan, scoop an spoonful of batter, pressing slightly to create a well in the center of each.
5. Bake for about six minutes, then remove from the oven and (carefully) re-press the well into the half-baked cookie using the other end of a wooden spoon.  It will have risen slightly in the oven.  
6. Return to the oven for another 5 minutes or until golden.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool before removing from pan.  Set cookie cups aside.
7. In a bowl, stir together all of the ingredients for the filling.  Spoon into the cookie cups.