Christmas Shortbreads

Ingredients:

2 sticks cold, unsalted butter

½ cup plus 2 TBS sugar

2 ½ cups flour

1 tsp salt

Cooking spray with flour

8 oz. good quality chocolate bar

• Pre-heat the oven to 300 degrees.
• Place the flour, sugar and salt in the bowl of a food processor and with the knife, mix the ingredients with a few pulses
• Cut the butter into cubes or slices and sprinkle around the flour mixture in the food processing bowl
• Pulse in the butter until the mixture starts to come together, but not quite into a ball (unless you are going to roll the dough and make cut-outs)
• If you have a shortbread mold (as the one pictured), spray with a cooking spray that also has a flour mixed in it.  I have tried using melted butter, and it just doesn’t get into the grooves as well, and the pattern doesn’t show up on the cookie quite so well.
• If you don’t have a mold, just use a metal brownie pan or round cake pan
• Empty the dough into the mold or pan, spread out the crumbs, and using your fingers, press the dough into the mold until it is one uniform layer.  Make sure you press out any seam or cracks as these will crack once the cookies are finished.
• If you want to roll the dough into cut-outs, process the dough until it comes to a ball, then roll out the dough on a lightly floured work surface and cut out your cookies into shapes, and place on a cookie sheet.  They will take only about 20-25 minutes.
• Bake for about 1 hour, until the top of the dough begins to turn golden brown
• Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely in the pan
• Once cooled, invert the pan and rap it down against a wooden board (don’t break your granite counter!) until the cookies release.  They should release in a single layer
• Carefully turn the cookie over, and gently score with a knife along the pre-formed edges
• The cookies can be served as is, or gently dipped into melted chocolate and turned upside down to allow the chocolate to set.  If you are serious about the chocolate, I would do some look-up on-line about how to melt chocolate so that it stays in temper.  I admit I am not a chocolate expert, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't!