Monday, June 3, 2013

shortbread: the 3 ingredient cookiegasm




These are a hit during the holidays. i love their simplicity, and the fact that these cookies are comprised of only three ingredients (save the part where you add a dash of this, or a splash of that to change the flavor, or decide to dip in jams/chocolate and make epic shortbread cookie sandwiches...buuut i'll leave that up to the reader to exercise such creativity.)

these are my sunday night "ok fine i'll do something besides laundry" treats. get creative with cutters, and you're good to go.

::gathering my raw materials::

ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, softened

1/2 (heaping) cup brown sugar--light or dark, don't matta

2 and 1/2 cups flour --and some for dusting/rolling out.

and that's basically it!

for interesting flavor, i decided to scrape a bit of vanilla bean in the mix and thrown that in. but totally optional. lemon zest, cinnamon, chocolate chips, or toasted nuts also make great additions to these treats.




a slew of cookie cutters help jog creativity. or keep it simple, circular, and flip your favorite pint glass upside down and use that.

directions:

in a large bowl, beat softened butter and brown sugar until fluffy. at this point, i added a bit of scraped vanilla bean innards to toy with the flavor a bit.







add your flour in a little at a time and continue to mix until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.






remove the dough from the bowl and pat into a disk. wrap with plastic wrap, and pop in the fridge for an hour or so.



heat oven to 350. remove dough from fridge and begin kneading. it'll be as hard as clay, so really work it with your hands. once the dough is pliable, sprinkle flour on a flat surface and go to town with a rolling pin. i'll leave the thickness up to you.

cut several patterns with your favorite cookie cutter. put on a cookie sheet and bake for about 13-15 minutes.




remove from oven and wait about 3 minutes before enjoying. =)



















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