Guest Post – Vanilla Shortbreads
December 2, 2015
The Finer Cookie is celebrating its first year anniversary—a milestone really. Having started with little to no knowledge on how to be a website, I have to say that I’m beginning to pin down my very own space on the WWW. My Subscriber List is growing and so is the number of followers across all the Social Media: FB, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and LinkedIn. That being said, there is so much inspiring talent and creativity in the food blogging industry. It is a warm and sharing community, and I’m very happy to be making my home within it.
One of the happiest outcomes of The Finer Cookie are the friends that I’ve made. Patricia of Butteryum is not just a fellow blogger, but she’s become a dear friend. We bake together as part of The Baking Bible, Alpha Baker Group, and we’ve spent many hours chatting it up about life in general, and food blogging in particular. Butteryum is a blog of easy-going elegance, with tutorials and detailed instructions that always ensure success. She works in a kitchen equipment store and features the best kitchen equipment.
Patricia took this beautiful picture of her Vanilla Shortbreads to celebrate The Finer Cookie’s first anniversary. Lucky for us, she has provided the recipe. Thank you Patricia. I think you’re awesome. When you’ve finished here, check out Butteryum’s Vanilla Shortbread Post.
Hi – I’m Patricia from ButterYum and I’m thrilled to be guest posting on Kim’s wonderful blog today. When she asked me if I’d consider guest posting to celebrate her blog’s 1st Anniversary, I was thrilled. As you all know, Kim is an incredibly talented blogger, author, baker, and photographer – to say I was flattered is an understatement, and I jumped at the chance. Saying yes was easy; choosing a cookie recipe to share, not so much. Since Kim lives in Canada, my first thought was to make something maple, then I thought maybe something French; but in the end, I chose to make these simple, yet elegant little shortbread cookies, not because shortbread is particularly Canadian, but because the cookie press I used to make them is from Canada. Let me show you how they’re made.
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Ingredients
- 2 sticks 226 grams 8 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1/2 cup 99 grams 3.5 ounces granulated sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon 1/2 teaspoon 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon 1/4 teaspoon 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
- 2 1/4 cups 281 grams 9.9 ounces all-purpose flour
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 300ºF.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment or a BeaterBlade, cream butter, sugar, vanilla, and salt on medium speed until light and fluffy.
- On low speed, add flour and mix just until no dry flour remains.
- Use a #50 scoop to portion dough evenly; roll into balls.
- Place dough balls on an unlined half sheet pan.
- Press balls with cookie stamp or the bottom of a glass.
- Bake in center of preheated oven for 20-30 minutes until they just begin to turn golden around the edges.
- Cool completely on rack before storing in an airtight container.
- To begin, you’ll need a stand mixer fitted with the flat paddle or BeaterBlade attachment. If you use the paddle attachment, you’ll have to occasionally scrape the the sides of the bowl. Not necessary if you use a BeaterBlade.
- The first thing we’re going to do is cream room temperature unsalted butter, granulated sugar, fine salt, and pure vanilla extract.
- Note how yellow the butter is before mixing.
- Here we are after about 1 minute. The color of the butter has lightened a bit.
- Here we are after creaming the butter mixture for 2 minutes. You can see how much lighter the color is now.
- Now it’s time to add the flour.
- To prevent a cloud of flour dust from flying out of the bowl, I drape a kitchen towel over the mixer. Plastic wrap works well too.
- When all the flour is incorporated and the cookie dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl, it’s time to move to the next step.
- Scoop the cookie dough onto the tray.
- That step is portioning out the cookie dough. I use a level #50 scoop (about 1 tablespoon) so each cookie ends up being exactly the same size.
- Using the warmth of your hands, roll each portion of dough into a smooth ball.
- Dip a cookie press in granulated sugar. This press makes the most beautiful design (available here – call or send an email and ask for the red shortbread press).
- Place the ball of cookie dough on a unlined half sheet pan and press.
- If you don’t have a cookie press, you can use a glass like this one that has a decorative design on the bottom.
- Dip the glass in sugar between presses.
- Different, but still very pretty. If the mood strikes, feel free to sprinkle extra sugar on the cookies after their pressed.
- Now it’s time to chill the pressed cookie dough for at least 15 minutes before baking. This step is the key to maintaining that lovely shape during baking.
- Bake cookies in preheated oven for 20 minutes. Cool for several minutes before transferring to a rack to cool completely. Store leftovers in an airtight container.
- Labels
- Kids,
- Quick and Easy
- Tags
- Shortbread,
- Vanilla
