I love citrus flavours. I’m not sure why – but whenever I open a baking book, I’ll be drawn to such things as lemon tea cake, orange and poppy seed cake and so on. So when I saw this recipe for Lime Kisses in Leith’s Baking Bible, I had to try it.

Now, I’m not much of a baker. The precision is too taxing on my pea-sized attention span, so I don’t often delve into the realm of flour and raising agents. However, as I see it, it’s pretty hard to muck up a batch of bikkies (or a batch of muffins), so I rolled my sleeves up and got stuck in.

The downside of following recipes from UK publications is that everything is in grams. I’m SO accustomed to measuring everything by cups, I HATE dragging the scales out and weighing things. In fact, the only reason that I have a set of scales is because my friend Enidd bequeathed them to my on her departure from the sunny climes of Kyiv back in 2007. I never felt the need to own scales before that.

So I have to give it to the poms – that they survive not only baking, but the extra fiddly-ness of weighing everything before it goes in!

These Lime Kisses are delicious – they have come out rather crumbly, almost like they’re halfway to being a shortbread. I think they are supposed to be a little smaller – these ended up being HUGE! In fact, I can’t even binge on them, because the decadent butter in the middle of the kisses is oh-so-very-sweet that I can’t have more than one a day. But that one is heartily savoured with a cup of coffee.

Behold…

Lime Kisses

Makes 12

170g/6oz self-raising flour

85g/3oz butter, cut into pieces

85g/3oz caster sugar

grated zest of 1 lime

1 egg, beaten

1 tablespoon lime juice

For the butter cream

55g/2oz butter

115g/4oz icing sugar

grated zest of half a lime

2-3 tablespoons lime juice

1. Heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment.

2. Sift the flour into a large bowl and rub in the butter with your fingertips until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the caster sugar and lime zest.

3. Mix the egg and lime juice into the mixture and bring together to form a soft dough.

4. Take teaspoonfuls of the mixture and shape into balls the size of cherries (ed: I missed the reference to the size of cherries!) using your hands. Place on the baking sheets and flatten slightly. Bake for approx. 15 minutes. Remove from the baking sheet to a wire rack to cool completely.

5. Make the buttercream: soften the butter with a wooden spoon. Add the sifted icing sugar and mix well. Add the lime zest and enough juice to taste.

6. Sandwich the cold biscuits together with the buttercream.

Voila!