Shortbread

Christmas is my favourite time of year. Not only is it beautiful snowy white and chilly out with the promise of gifts and cheer and family, it's the time of year when I can break out all my Christmas baking recipes.

A couple weeks ago, I had a massive cookie order, that involved family recipes of my client's.  These are always a bit tricky, as you want to get the recipes exactly how they are known, but trying to put your own little twist on them as well.

Part of this order was 3 large batches of shortbread.

For any of you novice bakers out there, shortbread is what I would consider one of the easier recipes you'll keep in your arsenal. All you need to remember is:

• 1 part sugar
• 2 parts butter
• 3 parts flour
• a pinch of salt
• bake at 350F

Once you master the basics, you can start adding in your own little tricks (e.g., corn starch and candycanes, which I will talk about in a later post)

Anyways. Back to my story.

On top of trying to master a family recipe, I noticed some discrepancies in her recipe. Rather than having a 1:2:3: ratio, it was a whopping 1:2:4.5! Take about some stiff dough, there's 50% more flour than normal! Her recipe was what I liked to call a "low and slow" bake. AKA., bake it at a low temperature, for a long time, to dry out the dough.

I gave it a try for myself to bring to a party, and found the dough rather difficult to work with. With a dry crumbly texture, it was difficult to keep together when rolling out for cookie cutters, but they baked up beautifully!

These cookies have a dry crumbly flaky texture, rather than the slight softness commonly associated with shortbread.

Ginger Shortbread

1 cup sugar
2 cup butter
4.5 cup all purpose flour
pinch salt
ginger baking pieces 

1. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, approximately 4 minutes.
2. Fold in all purpose flour and salt in 3 separate additions, until almost just blended. Add ginger baking pieces in with the last of the 3 flour additions.
3. Knead the remaining specks of flour with your hands and work the dough until it holds. Take half the dough out onto a floured rolling surface.
4. Roll dough to 0.25" thickness and cut out desired shape. Bake on a parchment or silpat lined cookie sheet at 300F for 40 minutes. Rotate pans at the 25 minute mark for even brownness.