Raspberry Almond Shortbreads
Normally, shortbread cookies are too sweet and very plain. These are not.
The recipe
Yield: 32 cookies
Time: 15 mins prep, 90 mins total
Ingredients
Cookies:
2 sticks (1 c or 225 g) salted butter at room temperature or a little cooler
1 tsp almond extract
½ tsp vanilla extract
50 g powdered sugar
50 g granulated sugar
40 g cornstarch
220 g flour
Glaze:
10 tbsp powdered sugar
2 tbsp freeze-dried raspberry powder
1 tbsp salted butter, melted
5 ½ tsp whole milk or heavy cream
Instructions
Cookies:
1. Prep two cookie sheets by laying pieces of parchment paper on them. Lay a third sheet of parchment paper out on your counter. It should be about 1.5 feet long.
2. Beat the butter on medium speed in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until it is soft.
3. Add in the almond and vanilla extracts. Beat them on medium low speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl, until they are fully incorporated into the butter.
4. Add the powdered sugar and granulated sugar. Beat on medium low speed until well incorporated.
5. Add the cornstarch and the flour. Mix on low speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl, until the mixture starts to come together in large clumps.
6. Scrape the dough out of the bowl and onto a sheet of parchment paper. Shape it into a rectangle with your hands, then place another sheet of parchment paper on top of it and use a rolling pin to roll it out into a rectangle 7 inches wide and 14 inches long.
7. Preheat your oven to 325°. Put one rack in the top third of the oven and another rack in the bottom third.
8. Chill the dough for about 10 mins.
9. Take the dough out of the fridge, then cut it into 32 cookies. They should be 3.5 inches long and less than an inch wide. I did this first by cutting my dough in half lengthwise, then cutting the top and bottom halves into 16 cookies each.
10. Transfer the dough to the cookie sheets with a spatula and gently prick each cookie a few times with a fork. Chill for another 30 mins.
11. Bake for 22-25 mins, swapping the cookie sheets halfway through, until the cookies are light golden brown on the edges.
12. Leave the cookies to cool for 5 minutes on the sheets, then use a spatula to gently transfer them to a wire cooling rack.
Glaze and finishing:
1. When the shortbreads are cool, melt the butter for the glaze in the microwave and set it aside.
2. Sift the powdered sugar, then add the raspberry powder. (I crushed up some freeze-dried raspberries with a rolling pin. If you’re going to do this, crush it up in a plastic bag because it makes a red mess. You could also try a food processor.)
3. Add in the melted butter (make sure it’s no longer hot) and stir. Add the milk and stir to combine.
4. Check the texture of your glaze. You want the consistency to be just easily spreadable on the cookies. When you stir the glaze with a spoon, make a little peak. If within half a minute, that peak softens so that it’s no longer sticking straight up, the consistency is right. Adjust with ½ tsp milk or a tablespoon of powdered sugar at a time if needed. Err on the side of too stiff so that it hardens.
5. Using a spoon, spread a thin layer of glaze on each cookie, not quite to the edges, and leave them on the racks to firm up. The glaze should harden within a half hour to an hour. After that, you can stack them on top of each other. Store at room temperature or in the freezer.
Notes and tips
The salted butter is my secret to these shortbreads tasting so good! Unsalted shortbreads taste bland and too sweet, and trying to add table salt to the dough wouldn’t work because it won’t dissolve and will be grainy.
I use parchment paper on my cookie sheets because it prevents sticking. Sometimes getting cookies off your sheets is a balancing act, trying to let them firm up enough that they don’t break apart or turn to goo when you move them to the cooking rack, but not letting them cool too much so they stick to the sheet. If you use parchment, they should peel right off even if they’re cold. Just be careful when you switch racks in the oven; it’s easy for the parchment to slide off the cookie sheets.
The neater the edges of your rectangle of dough look, the better the final cookies will look. I found it useful to straighten my edges with the side of my knife before cutting them, and then after I transferred them to the cookie sheets, I neatened up any cookies that had gone wonky in transfer, and they still didn’t look perfect!
I have you chill down the dough before cutting it so that you get neater edges and because cold dough is a little easier to work with. Chilling the dough again before baking helps the shortbreads keep their shape in the oven.
I have you sift the powdered sugar so that your glaze has no lumps in it (other than from the raspberry seeds).
The story
My normal complaint about shortbreads is that they don’t live up to their potential. All that butter! All that sugar! And the delightful crunchiness! But they’re often bland, one-note in their flavor because they’re just sweet. So I added my secret weapon: salt! In the form of salted butter. And the cake snob found a shortbread she could get behind.
I also thought, Why not add some flavor to a this plain cookie? (That’s not true; what I actually thought was, How in the world am I going to use up this bag of freeze-dried raspberries languishing in my pantry?) I apologize for asking you to buy freeze-dried raspberries only to use two tablespoons of them, dooming you to the same fate as me. No, I take that back. The glaze is so delicious it’s worth it. And look on the bright side; now we can go on this journey together! I solemnly promise to keep developing recipes using freeze-dried raspberries until both our pantries are free from the bondage of that small bit of food you can’t justify throwing out.
Last, one of my pet peeves is the wrong frosting to baked good ratio (everyone has too little frosting), which is why these shortbreads are thinner than normal ones. So my true gift to you is that because these cookies are half as thick as normal shortbreads, you can eat twice as many. You are welcome.
Spread the love
If you like this recipe, please recommend Confessions of a Cake Snob to someone you know! Also feel free to share this newsletter with a friend, comment on the website, or bake it and let me know how it went for you! Email me with comments, things you’d like to see, and suggestions at confessionsofacakesnob@substack.com. I’m excited to hear from you!