Phenomenal Phoods

Holiday Shortbreads

Ingredients:

For the regular shortbreads (full recipe):

• 2 cups butter (softened (yes, you read that right))
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 cup rice flour
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

For the chocolate shortbreads (full recipe):

• 2 cups butter (softened)
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 cup rice flour
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions:

1. The instructions for both types of shortbread are the same. Mix the butter, sugar and vanilla just until combined (you don't want to overwork the dough). If you are adding food colouring, add it during this step.
2. Add the flours (and cocoa powder) and mix just until combined. The mixture will look really crumbly. At this point, I like to just use my hands to form a dough to prevent overworking the dough with the mixer.
3. Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes to an hour before rolling out. For the chocolate dough, chill for 1-2 hours as the dough is a little harder to work with for rolling.
4. When ready, preheat oven to 300 degrees F and line a few baking sheets with parchment paper.
5. Roll the dough out on a floured surface (a pastry mat works wonders for this) and cut out shapes. Place on baking sheets about an inch apart.
6. Bake at 300 degrees F. for 20-25 minutes until golden brown. If you made your cookies super thin when rolling, start checking them at 15 minutes. Also note that your chocolate shortbreads are less likely to spread if you put the cookie sheets in the fridge for about 10 minutes after cutting the cookies out and before baking. I just keep the sheet that I am going to bake next in the fridge while the previous one is in the oven and keep them in rotation that way.