Cranberry Shortbread Cookies

In my world there are two types of people, those who like sugar cookies and those who like shortbread cookies.  I LOVE shortbread cookies, but could pass most sugar cookies put in front of me.

I have tried tons of shortbread recipes and in most cases I am left disappointed, so I decided to take the successful parts of all these recipes and combine them into one, to make a delicious, moist and rich shortbread cookie.

Just to keep things on the interesting side today I have also decided to try to incorporate the 2nd requested flavour by my mother for Christmas baking….the cranberry.

This recipe did work fantastically and will make it my go-to shortbread recipe, but the one thing I would change is the cranberry.  I bought dried cranberries from the bins you find at grocery stores or bulk barn, so most of the cranberries were dried whole.  What I will be doing next time is taking a knife to the cranberries and dicing them up finer, it is really hard to cut a whole cranberry with a cookie cutter I must admit!

 

Ingredients

 

1 cup cold butter

1/2 cup icing sugar

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup corn starch

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup dried cranberries (this can be switched out for anything, such as mini chocolate chips)

 

1) Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

2) Cut butter into slices and put into the bowl of mixer that is fitted with the paddle attachment.  Beat the butter until smooth, but not creamy.

3) Sift icing sugar into the butter and cream.

4) In a small bowl sift the flour, cornstarch and salt together.

5) With the mixer on speed 2 incorporate the flour mixture into the butter and sugar mixture.

6) Add the vanilla and cranberries, only mix until ingredients are combined, do not over mix!

7) Scrape down the bowl and with your hands from the batter into a ball of dough.

– This should only take a minute, it will combine fairly easily.

8) Divide dough into 4 pieces.

9) Working with a quarter at a time (while the other quarters are in the fridge) roll out your dough on a lightly floured surface.

10) Using any cookie cutter of your choice, cut out your cookies and place on a 9×13 baking sheet.

11) Freeze baking sheet lined with cut cookies for a few minutes to allow the butter to come back down in temperature.

– Do not skip this step!  If you want a nice flakey and buttery cookie you will want to take the extra few minutes and cool down the cookie dough.

12) Bake for 12 minutes.

Here is the final product:

 

Hope you enjoy!