This Christmas season has been a little slow for me. J and I haven’t had to attend many Christmas Parties and we also haven’t really had people come over either. It seems that everyone else is super busy but us as we missed most of the Christmas shenanigans while we were in Dominican. My first taste of Christmas treats were things people brought into work and some goodies my friend C made for girls night. Our home has yet to be filled with the aroma of Christmas baking until today.

 

When I think of Christmas goodies I think my favourites are rum balls, Nanaimo bars, chocolate covered cherry balls and shortbread cookies. J absolutely loves shortbread too so I decided to make us some soft, melt in your mouth, buttery shortbread.

 

Shortbread adapted from Joy of Baking

Ingredients

 

  • 1 cup unsalted butter (at room temperature)
  • ½ cup icing sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • ¼ tsp salt

 

 

In the bowl of your mixer whip the butter for about 1 minute, add icing sugar and stir for about 3 minutes until light and fluffy. Add Vanilla until incorporated. In a separate bowl combine flour and salt together. Slowly add flour mixture to butter until just mixed in, don’t over mix.

 

Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 30-60 min. (until firm)

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface until ¼ inch thick and cut into desired shapes. Bake for about 8-10 minutes or until cookies are very lightly browned.

 

 

My cookies were slightly thicker then ¼ inch so it took an extra 4 minutes to cook. It’s really important at that point to really watch them because they can brown very fast which really ruins the flavour of shortbread. I am so very happy that I decided to do some baking for Christmas after all. J and I filled out bellies with eggnog and shortbread warm from the oven while occasionally cuddling with our puppy monster. What a great evening!