Shortbread Cookies

SHORTBREAD COOKIES

A wonderful and easy meal. Despite their few ingredients, these shortbread biscuits look and taste fantastic.

One of my resolutions for this year was to learn to bake, so when at home this past vacation, I purchased a wide range of baking supplies: cookie cutters, scales, baking thermometers, cake testers, scraping spoons, and more.

This past weekend, I unwrapped and used all of my new baking supplies. Shortbread cookies, baked by myself.

Seeing blogs like this, this, and this, which are adorned with adorable and beautiful cookie pictures, the contents of the pictures, and those little cookies that you just wanted to scratch from the monitor and pop them in your mouth, made me want to dress up my blog with some eye-candy pictures of my own.

A huge positive is that it’s really easy to follow and almost impossible to fail at. My favorite cookie is shortbread. They’re delectable.

Each serving of this recipe contains only 317 calories.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups of all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 2 teaspoons of vegetable shortening
• 1 cup of unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup of icing sugar
• 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Make two separate batches of flour and salt by mixing them together in a bowl. Set aside.
2. Whisk eat the butter until it is light and fluffy (about 1 minute). Beat in the sugar and vegetable shortening until it forms a smooth, creamy mixture (about 2 minutes). Add the vanilla essence to the batter. Take care not to over-stir the flour mixture. Refrigerate for at least an hour after flattening the dough into a disk and wrapping it in plastic wrap.
3. Preheat oven to 350°F.
4. Put parchment paper on two baking sheets. Spread out the dough to 1/4-inch thick on a lightly floured surface. Using a lightly floured cookie cutter, cut the dough into desired shapes. Cookies should be placed on a preheated baking sheet and refrigerated for about 15 minutes. When baked, the cookies will retain their shape since the dough has been kneaded.
5. 8 to 10 minutes baking time until they’re just beginning to brown on the edges.
6. Chill on a cooling rack.