Sugared Shortbread
Good things don’t always have to come in big packages. Baking doesn’t have to be a long, drawn out process to yield delicious, worthwhile packages. Christmas treats shouldn’t have to always take you a few days to crank out of the kitchen.
And this is coming from someone who will dedicate entire weekends to her baking endeavors if the recipe so calls for it.
If you’re sitting down at the moment and thinking, “Boy, I’d really love to have a really yummy Christmas cookie right about now but I sure don’t feel like spending a bunch of time in the kitchen.”, then rest easy. There is indeed a solution to this problem.
The solution is shortbread. Sugared Shortbread to be exact.
I really don’t know how I’ve been baking for as long as I have and *just* now got around to baking shortbread but I suppose Christmas is as good a time as any to start. This recipe is so easy, there really was no excuse for me to try and hide behind anymore. From the time I made the decision to take a stab at the shortbread to mixing the ingredients, baking, then finish was really no more than one hour, TOPS.
It was just SO simple. And the results.
I was skeptical that a cookie with so few and ‘standard’ ingredients could be something worth writing home about at all. But fortunately,even skeptics like me get proven wrong at times. I don’t know what it is about the combination of these few, simple ingredients, but they create a cookie that is really, really REALLY addictive.
The smell as it’s baking is…wow. I was excited before I even took it out of the oven. Does it *need* the extra sprinkling of sugar on top? Not necessarily. On it’s own, it’s a pretty darn tasty stick of buttery shortbread, but the added sugar does give it that extra sweetness and an added crunchy texture on top. The texture of the shortbread itself is sandy and tender; think a thick sandie cookie that melts in your mouth. Because I prefer the flavor, I used two teaspoons of vanilla extract but this shortbread is so versatile that I could easily see using ANY other extract with excellent results: lemon, lime, coconut, anise, almond, orange. If you wanted to add in citrus zest, that too would be awesome.
Bottom line, if you’ve got about 10 minutes to spare, then you should whip together this shortbread. It’s a perfect bite of Christmas cheer if ever I took one–and I took several.
Day 1: Stuffing Bread
Day 2: Pumpkin Crunch Tart
Day 3: Cinnamon Roll Cookies
Day 4: Dulce de Leche Hot Chocolate
Day 5: Almond Stamped Cookies
Day 6: Spiced Cookie Bark
Day 7: Demerara Sugar Buns
Day 8: Sugared Shortbread
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Sugared Shortbread
Recipe Adapted from New York Times
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup rice flour*
- 1/2 cup sugar, and more as needed
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 16 tablespoons unsalted butter (2 sticks), melted and cooled
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
*You can make your own rice flour by pulverizing plain long grain rice in a high power blender (like a Ninja or Nutribullet) on the highest setting until grains are very fine and powdery.
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8 or 9 inch square pan with parchment paper.
Whisk the dry ingredients (flours, sugar and salt) together with a fork or wire whisk. Pour in the melted butter and vanilla extract. Stir together until evenly combined.
Press into the bottom of the pan evenly with your hands or rubber spatula. Bake for 40 minutes. Remove from the pan and sprinkle with a thin layer of sugar. Bake for 5 more minutes.
Using a bench scraper or a knife, cut shortbread into slices while still warm and sprinkle more sugar on top if desired. Allow to cool completely.
Do you have to use the rice flour? They sound super yummy.
It’s not an absolute necessity in my opinion, what the rice flour does is give the dough a more fine & sandy texture that is VERY good but won’t ruin the recipe without. If you have a blender like a ninja or nutribullet then you can make your own rice flour by blitzing plain dried white rice for a few minutes until it’s pulverized, but if you don’t just, I would just substitute the rice flour for cake flour.
Great, thanks a bunch.
The rice flour does add a more delicate touch. I use it for pancakes too and they are so nice. Thanks for this recipe! Tomorrow we shall have Sugared Shortbread!
Oh wow, that’s a great idea. Rice flour probably makes the pancakes taste AMAZING. Thank you Patricia 🙂
They look soft and amazing! Great recipe!!
Thanks very much Rita!
These look amazing.
-Cristy
http://www.happyfamilyblog.com
Thank you so much Cristy!
That shortbread is perfection. You can see how tender and buttery it is. The addition of rice flour is a great idea, what kind of rice flour did you use.
I took plain long grain rice then blitzed it in my Ninja for a few minutes. You just sift the powder out and voila! Rice flour lol Thank you Suzanne 🙂
one recipe I saw said you could substitute cornstarch for the rice flour. Have you ever tried that? “You can substitute cornstarch for the rice flour, but you’ll end up with a slightly softer crumb” What about brown rice flour?
I’ve never tried substituting the rice flour for cornstarch, so I’m not sure how that would come out. I think that brown rice flour would probably still work fine, it will just lend a nuttier flavor to the shortbread, as brown rice has a different flavor than white rice.