Laurie's Promised No Fail, No Fuss Shortbread Cookies

I am no baker! True facts.  Hubs and Dot will tell you I make a great banana bread and killer butter tarts but that's it.  Everything else is hit and miss. Mostly miss.  (see my recent cake fiascos).  It is holiday season and time to create some yummy sweet treats in the kitchen.  Christmas isn't Christmas without shortbread (or so says Hubs) so I was on the hunt for an easy no fuss shortbread recipe.  I don't have the patience for rolling and cutting and all that "stuff".  A twitter friend sent me this recipe:

1lb butter

3cups flour
1cup icing sugar
½ cup cornstarch
1 tsp vanilla.
beat  together until  like whipped cream.  Spoon on greased sheet. bake at 350F for  approx. 15 mins. Melts in your mouth!

Looks simple enough.  How hard can it be? I will give it a try.

Yesterday I planned to make the cookies but it was one of those days when everything that could get in the way of me getting in the kitchen did.  It went like this:

My plan for the day was simple:

Late start = sleep in :D
Make breakfast
Pack lunch for Jess
Drop Jess at school
Get nails done
Bake Shortbread cookies
Pick Jess up from school
Make dinner
Wrap gifts

Here’s how  it actually went:
Late start = wake up EARLIER than usual
Make breakfast
Take out butter for cookies to soften
Pack lunch for Jess
Drop Jess at school
Get nails done (and here’s where it went off track)
Bring Jessica’s packed lunch TO her at school
Put on Christmas music
Butter is not ready.
Clear off island
Take stuff from the island upstairs
Spot wreath that needs to be completed for gift this weekend. Finish that.
Hands covered in glitter and glue so I have to wash my hands
Sink in kitchen has dirty dishes in it. Wash hands anyway
Unload dishwasher
Reload dishwasher
Take stuff from island to basement
Throw on a load of laundry. Need a basket for the stuff in the dryer. OH.. cat boxes need changing.
Change cat boxes. Take out to porch. Oh.. it’s warm out here today. I’ll set up my Yule offering.
Set up Yule offering on the porch and hang the last few decorations for the porch.
Mail man arrives so I read the Christmas cards. Put them on the display.
Take the empty laundry basket to the basement for the dried load. Oh wait… that’s still upstairs.
While I’m up there, I grab the Christmas gifts I need to wrap for this weekend.
Now I’m hungry… cuz it’s noon!

The afternoon carried on in similar fashion and I never did actually get the cookies done.  I did make a glorious pork tenderloin recipe for dinner though!

To be sure nothing got in my way of baking the cookies, I made sure my kitchen was clean and tidy before I went to bed so it was all ready to go first thing in the morning.   After dropping my daughter off at school and enjoying my coffee and breakfast, I started gathering up my ingredients and making my mise en place (fancy words Hubs using meaning getting everything measured and ready and nearby the work area). 

The recipe is simple with only a few ingredients.  I put the softened butter in the mixing bowl. I mixed all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and added them slowly to the butter and vanilla mixture.  When it looked like whipped cream I figured it was ready.  

 I dropped them on a parchment lined baking pan using 2 teaspoons. Easy enough. They looked a bit messy. I wasn't sure if I should flatten them or leave them be. So I left them alone.  I have a gas convection oven and I was worried about burning the cookies so I watched them closely.  The instructions say bake for 15 minutes.  At 10 minutes they were starting to brown around the edges so I took them out of the oven then.  I let them cool a bit on the pan, then moved them to a rack. 

Feeling confident now, I dropped another tray full of cookies.  This time I added little bits of candy cane to the cookies.  The next batch, I topped with a semi-sweet chocolate chip.  Look!

Don't they look yummy?  They ARE! They are fluffy and light and yuuuumeeee. 

So here's what I learned while trying this recipe:

The batter looks more like butter cream icing then whipped cream.

These cookies are super easy, and truly fool proof.  Just, mix, drop and bake.

10 minutes was enough in my oven.

The dough that was scooped and smoothed rather than dropped by 2 spoon method were nicer looking when cooked.  I tried rolling them like meatballs, but my hands are way too hot.

The person who gave me the recipe suggested piping them from a pastry bag with a large tip.  This recipe would work beautifully in a piping bag or cookie press.

The dough was easier to work with when it was kept chilled between oven batches, but if kept in the fridge for longer than 10ish minutes it was too hard to scoop.

I kept 2 spoons in the fridge and that made it super easy to work the dough.

This one really was easy peasy. I got 5 1/2 dozen cookies from this recipe.  Dots gave it a good report.  Hubs will try later tonight (and I'll update).  I'm told that they need to rest a few days and will then be even better.  Give them a try!