If you are anything like me, time flies when researching for something to delight my guests with. I can sometimes spend days and weeks looking for that perfect recipe to try. The internet sure has made this process easier. I remember having to leaf through cut out or torn pages from magazines or newspapers or old cookbooks to find the right item to make. Well, this is one of those items – I call it “Shortbread-ish” because sure enough someone out there who has been making shortbread all their lives will say “it’s not shortbread”. But, I venture into neutral territory when I throw an “-ish” onto the end of it.  

This recipe was found in a stack of hand-written (and in some cases barely legible), typed and photocopied, magazine/newspaper clippings that belonged to my mother-in-law. It was actually written by someone in her office and was labelled “Shortbread”. She only kept those recipes she really liked and being a bit of a baker herself, she knew what she liked. The buttery taste and delicate crumb of the cookie says “shortbread” to me!

I used two types of rolling pins on this – one was really experimental – a regular flat rolling pin and an engraved rolling pin. The engraved rolling pin left a nice imprint onto the surface of the shortbread. A lot of shortbread recipes call for icing sugar, I used fine sugar as this recipe didn’t specify and I did want to try and stick to the original. There was also no mention of using a mixer so I’m presuming it was done by hand (yikes!!).

Soon as I read this I knew I had to share it with you through my Christmas Treat collection. If you shy away from making shortbread, this is a recipe for you to make. If you can make sugar cookies, you can most definitely make these. I know you are used to seeing my ingredient measurements for baking by weight, but I’m going to present it as written. I got about 90 (1 ½” x 1 1/2”) squares of shortbread from this batch. So start baking (and nibbling) on these today! If you use any of the suggestions in the “Notes…” section, do not call it “shortbread”, simply call it a biscuit!   As always – enjoy!

Ingredients:
1 lb salted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
4 cups flour (halve all the quantities if 4 cups is too much for you)
1 cup rice flour

Directions:
1. Heat the oven to 300f
2. Line two baking trays with parchment – set aside
3. Sift the two flours together – set aside
4. In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter and sugar and mix well/cream – starting on medium speed and working up to high
5. After 5 minutes, scrape down the bowl and repeat this two more times. This will ensure your sugar is completely integrated with your butter – rub a little bit of the mixture between your fingers, you shouldn’t feel gritty
6. With the mixer on low, slowly add the flour to the butter mixture, stopping to scrape down the bowl
7. When all the flour has been added and you have just bought it together, stop the machine
8. Empty the dough onto your clean counter or onto a large piece of parchment – flatten the dough into a rough circle or square, divide in half – it’s a fair amount of dough to work in one go
9. Place another piece of parchment on top and roll to about ¼” thickness
10. Cut into squares or bars or use a cookie cutter to make small circles
11. Using the tines of a fork, poke a series of holes – I did 3 rows, 9 holes, into each piece
12. Sprinkle with additional fine sugar, transfer to the prepared baking trays
13. Bake for 40 – 45 minutes rotating trays half way through the baking process, they shouldn’t take on any browning so keep an eye on the last 5+ minutes of baking – mine took 45 minutes
14. Cookies will move easily on the tray when nudged – let cool, nibble as you wish

Tips, Notes and/or Recommendations:
This will work with either icing sugar or if you promise to cream it really well, regular sugar
You know that Freeze Dried Strawberry Powder from the first post, put a teaspoon of this into the dough mix
You can also mix 1 tsp of the powder with 4 tbsps of icing sugar – sift over the cookies to serve