By Rebecca Bent
This weekend my kids walked past a cute bakery and saw the most amazing chocolate covered shortbread cookies. When we got home, I luckily found my grandmother’s recipe in one of her old cookbooks—I think her recipe is one of the best. When we started to collect all the ingredients, we quickly realized (and I have no idea how this happened in my kitchen!) that we didn’t have any vanilla extract. Disaster was averted when my middle daughter suggested we use freshly squeezed lemon juice instead. Thank goodness we gave it a go because the cookies were fantastic—dare I say, we took my grandmother’s tried and true recipe to new delicious heights.
Lemony Shortbread Sugar Cookies covered in Chocolate
Makes 16 cookies
2 sticks of unsalted butter
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract (or freshly squeezed lemon juice, you can even add in some zest for more lemon flavor)
1¾ all purpose flour, plus more flour for dusting
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 cup of your favorite chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
In a standing mixer fitted with a paddle, combine the butter, sugar, lemon (or vanilla), flour, and salt and mix until thoroughly blended. Once the dough starts to form, turn it out on to a well-floured surface and roll out the cookie dough with a well floured rolling pin until it’s a little less than a ½ inch thick. Cut out cookie shapes with cookie cutters and transfer each cookie to a Pam-sprayed cookie sheet no closer than one inch apart. Continue working through the dough until all of it is used. This recipe should make about 16 cookies, but this number will vary based on the thickness of the dough and of course the size of the cookie cutters.
Place the cookie sheet in the oven and bake for 15 minutes or until the cookies start to take on a very light golden hue. Since every oven has hot spots, it is a good idea to rotate the cookie sheet during the cooking process. When the cookies are at your desired doneness, remove them from the oven and transfer them to a cookie rack to cool.
Line a cutting board or plate with plastic wrap. Set it aside.
In a small pyrex bowl melt the ½ cup of the chocolate chips in a microwave in 30 second pulses, stirring occasionally. Keep pulsing until the chips are melted.
Pick up a cookie and hold it over the melted chocolate and coat half of it using a small spoon. Place the chocolate covered cookie on the plastic wrapped lined plate. Continue to coat the cookies and melt more chocolate as needed. Let the chocolate set before serving.
Side Note:
If you want to prepare this without a mixer, the ingredients are the same. You’ll first need to mash up the butter with your fingers and mash it into the flour. Next, add the other ingredients and cook as indicated.
