Key Lime Pie Scones for St. Patrick's Day

I thought it would be so yummy to develop a scone recipe that tasted like my favorite pie - Key Lime Pie!  I wanted to have a filling that included the main ingredients of the pie - sweetened condensed milk and key lime juice, combined with whipped cream. Doesn't that sound divine?! So, here's what I did....

First I made the dough, which included the zest from 2 limes and 3 tablespoons of key lime juice.

Then I rolled the dough out and cut out my shapes. (I know, Valentine's Day is long over but I just love heart shapes!)

Now, we're ready to bake!

This scone recipe is different from other recipes because it has lime juice instead of cream or buttermilk. That doesn't mean that it's lower in calories though, because it has alot more butter!

I had two ideas for filling my scones. The first idea was to split the scone and fill with key lime filling, replace the top and sprinkle with powdered sugar......

I thought the scones looked very pretty. My second idea was to leave them intact, and pipe the filling decoratively on the top.....

These looked really pretty too..... but I wanted to go a step further.....

and sprinkle them with powdered sugar! Love them!

One thing about the scones - they are yummy and they melt in your mouth, but they are crumbly and do not slice well. I broke half of the scones that I tried to split. I recommend using a different scone recipe if you want to split and fill them. Here's the link to my toffee scones recipe. You can use that recipe and just leave out the toffee pieces and the crumble topping.

OK, here's the recipe:

For the Key Lime Scones:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/3 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp cream of tartar

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/8 tsp salt

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) chilled salted butter, cut into small pieces

2 tbsp lime zest

1 large egg

3 tbsp key lime juice

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Mix the flour, sugar, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Add butter pieces and work in with a pastry blender until mixture looks like coarse meal. Mix in the lime zest.

Whisk egg and lime juice together and add to the flour mixture. Stir until just blended then turn out onto a floured surface. Knead gently until smooth. Roll out dough to 3/4" thickness and cut out shapes or divide dough in half,  pat each half into rounds and cut each round into 6 wedges. Place scones on baking sheet and bake until golden, 10-13 minutes. Cool completely.

For Key Lime Filling:

1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk

1/3 cup key lime juice (I used store bought juice)

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

3 tbsp sugar

In a small bowl, stir together the can of sweetened condensed milk with the 1/3 cup key lime juice until combined. In a medium (chilled) bowl of a mixer, with a (chilled) whisk attachment, combine 1/2 cup of the milk/juice mixture (you're going to have some left) with the 1 1/2 cups heavy cream and 3 tbsp sugar.  Beat until stiff.

At this point, you can split your scones and spoon or pipe filling or top your scones with the filling using a pastry bag with an open star tip. I got 25 scones using my 2" heart shaped cookie cutter.

I thought they turned out very well, and I wanted my filling to be the color green to honor the holiday.......but to make them really luscious, and more like key lime pie, I would split the scones, place 2-3 tbsp of the sweetened condensed milk/key lime juice mixture on botton half, then on top of that spoon a couple tbsp sweetened whipped cream, replace top then sprinkle with powdered sugar! Luscious!!

And now, an Irish Blessing for you dear reader, c/o my friend Lisa over at The Enchanted Oven :

May your troubles be less,

And your blessings be more,

And nothing but Happiness

come through your door.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!