If you read our blog last week, you will know that this month we are fully embracing the holiday spirit and keeping our posts light.  This week we are featuring an easy and basic shortbread recipe Carol has been using year over year with her holiday baking.

The photo above shows just a few different varieties of cookies that can be made from this versatile recipe.

Ingredients:

1 cup corn starch
1 cup icing sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups butter

Optional Garnishes:  Cocoa powder, maraschino cherries, walnuts, pecans, almonds, cranberries, coconut flakes, coloured sugar sprinkles.... an endless list of garnish possibilities!

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine the first 4 ingredients together in a large bowl.

Soften butter in the microwave. The butter can be soft and slightly melted, but DO NOT let it melt completely to liquid or get hot.

Mix the butter into the dry ingredients and mix until well blended.

At this point, you can split the dough into two halves, making plain/garnished shortbread with one half, and making other variations (see below) with the remaining half. If you are making just simple shortbread, that is perfectly fine too. The cookies are delicious no matter how "plain" they are!

Using your hands, roll a small amount of dough into a ball, and place each ball on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.  (Hint – the smaller the cookies, the more servings you will have!)

Press down cookies to desired thickness with a fork lightly dipped in flour.  They don’t spread much, but leave about an inch between each cookie as you place them on the cookie sheet.

Garnish?  Press a small piece of maraschino cherry, or half a walnut, or a piece of cranberry into the middle of each cookie, or sprinkle it with coloured sugar.

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until lightly browned.  They should still be fairly white in colour when done, with just the tiniest bit of browning around the edges.  The thinner you made them, the sooner they will be done, so make sure you are monitoring them.

Variations:

With the other half of the dough, you have a variety of options at your fingertips.

• Mix in 2 tablespoons of high-quality cocoa powder. You will have yummy chocolate shortbread, or
• Mix unsweetened finely-grated coconut, or
• Mix in finely chopped almonds and season with a bit of almond flavoring.
• Mix in finely chopped pecans and garnish with a pecan half

As mentioned above, this recipe extremely versatile.  By making 2 batches of cookies, and adding  variations along with the basic recipe, the yield will be four different kinds of cookies - all from one basic recipe.

Happy baking!

Stay tuned next week for one of Linda's favourite and repeat-requested holiday desserts:  Red Velvet Peppermint Trifle.