Shortbread is about as simple as it’s possible for a cookie to be: butter, flour, sugar, and salt. There aren’t any tricky techniques or exotic ingredients. Recipes won’t throw technical put-the-newbie-in-their-place baking terms.
But weirdly, as you learn more about baking you find shortbread seems deeply suspicious.
“Where are the eggs? How will the dough hold together without eggs?” It turns out that exactly one half of the point of shortbread is that it is crumbly and delicate, and you don’t actually want it to hold together very long — just long enough to go from the oven to your plate to your mouth.
“What about the vanilla? EVERY cookie recipe has to have vanilla!” Yeah, not shortbread. The other half of the point of shortbread is the flavor of the butter. Even Vanilla, Supreme Angelic Queen of the Flavorings would be a distraction from the butter.
Eventually you learn to just accept the shortbreadiness of it all.
2 cups (240 g) flour – all-purpose flour works well for this, but because this is shortbread and does not depend on gluten to hold it together or anything, you can probably go crazy with whatever type of flour you like. Even rice flour would probably work well.
¼ teaspoon salt – I like to use coarse sea salt or kosher salt to bring little crunchy pops of salt to the final cookies.
Zest of two limes
1 cup (2 cubes) butter
¾ cup (85 g) powdered sugar
¾ cup (125 g) dried tart cherries
6 tablespoons (62 g) roasted salted sunflower seed kernels
Don’t worry about preheating your oven, not yet anyway. This dough needs to chill for several hours in the refrigerator before you bake it.
Whisk the flour, salt and lime zest together, then set it aside.
Cream the butter with your electric mixer — I use a stand mixer — until it is fluffy and lighter in color. Then beat in the powdered sugar, slowly at first so it doesn’t poof up into your face.
Slowly, a large spoonful at a time, mix in the flour mixture. You might have to scrape butter from the bottom of the bowl or the paddle of your mixer. Mix in the sunflower seeds and cherries.
Scoop the dough onto a large sheet of waxed paper or parchment paper. Roll it into a log and wrap up each end, then chill it in your refrigerator for at least four hours or overnight.
Now you can preheat your oven — to 325°F.
Unwrap your cookie mummy and cut slices from it about half an inch thick. Place the slices on a silicone- or parchment-lined baking sheet, and bake until they just barely start to brown a little, probably somewhere around 20 minutes or so. You will probably end up with two batches of 12 cookies.
Let the shortbread cool on the baking sheet and enjoy with tea.
Featured photo: Cherry-Sunflower Shortbread. Photo by John Fladd.
