What's Christmas without shortbread?

One of my favorite cookies is shortbread. In years past, I've made this treat only at Christmas, usually to hand out to friends and neighbors as gifts.

This year, I saw a different recipe online ("Buttery British shortbread") and decided to give it a go. The difference was semolina flour, something I've never used before.

This version called for the cookies to be baked in one large sheet in baking pans. (I made another batch later and just pressed it into smaller cookie sheets, which worked fine.)

I used a jar dipped in sugar as a small rolling pin to roll everything flat. (In the subsequent batch, I just flattened it with my hands.)

The dough is then sprinkled with coarse demerara sugar.

The result was, indeed, delicious and buttery, a perfect Christmas treat.

I may have a new favorite recipe!

Christmas goodies and Christmas flowers

We've been swimming in eggs lately. All our young hens are now laying, and we're getting between eight and a dozen eggs a day. They tend to add up quickly.

Besides giving a bunch away, what better way to use a whole lotta eggs than by making homemade Irish Cream?

I found the recipe for Irish Cream in the wonderful book Cheaper and Better.


Irish Cream only has six ingredients: eggs, sweetened condensed milk, instant coffee, chocolate syrup, vodka, and cream (in that order). I tell ya, this recipe is better than Bailey's! I multiply the recipe by ten in order to have enough on hand for friends and neighbors, which uses up twenty of my eggs. Instructions for making Irish Cream are here.

With a 10x batch like this, I start off using my largest mixing bowl...

...and finish up using my biggest stock pot.

The bottles must be dark for the Irish Cream to ripen properly. But here's the thing -- I ran out of dark bottles. So...

...I recycled two of the three empty vodka bottles. But since the bottles are supposed to be dark, I wrapped them in duct tape. Don called this "Redneck Irish cream." Clearly these won't be gift bottles -- we'll keep these for ourselves and toast in Christmas with the contents.

For our non-drinking neighbors (and we have many LDS neighbors), I make giganto-batches of shortbread cookies. Here's some of the mess.

By the way, the paperwork you see on the table is Older Daughter's application for nanny school. We submitted the paperwork on Wednesday evening (by email), making her eligible for a small financial scholarship.

Here's the first batch of cookies. I still have many more to make to have enough for friends, neighbors, and some service people in our community.

Oh, and my Christmas cactus is blooming. Read this to understand why this little plant is so significant. Just had to throw in a photo.

Christmas goodies

I woke up at 2:30 am this morning. Grunt. Couldn't get back to sleep.

As I lay there in bed, it occurred to me that if I got up now, I could get all my Christmas baking (which I'd been putting off) done early. So I did. Fired up the oven at 3 am.

This year I made shortbread for our friends and neighbors. The shortbread recipe I use is as follows:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup rice flour
1 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar

This is a recipe where butter should always be used, never margarine.

And surprisingly, the secret ingredient is rice flour, which makes the cookie very delicate and flaky.

I made numerous octuple-batches of shortbread today. I don't know if I ever want to see another bit of shortbread. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First, mix the two flours together and set aside.

Since chilled butter is rock-hard, I soften it in the microwave.

Mix the softened butter with the sugar until the sugar has dissolved into the butter.

Then add the flour mix.

It may be tough to use a mixer, so be prepared to mix it by hand if necessary.

Form small balls of dough, no more than about an inch across (they'll spread out). By the way if these pans look messy, it's because I'd already baked about fifteen or sixteen batches of shortbread by the time it was light enough to take these photos.

Gently flatten the balls with the bottom of a tumbler dipped in sugar.

Bake at 350F for, well, I don't know. In my oven, it's 11 minutes exactly. You'll have to learn what time works for you. Do NOT overbake these -- overly-browned shortbread just doesn't taste good.

These cookies are very rich and very fragile. They're not the sort of cookie you can ship through the mail!

I baked batch after batch after batch. Long ago lost count. I think it was 24 batches, but I'm not sure.

By the time I called it quits nine hours after I started, I can heartily assure you I didn't want to see another shortbread cookie until next Christmas. (Each of those piles has between seven and nine cookies.)

Massive cleanup effort.

Ah, but my day's work wasn't done. Next I had to make an octuple batch of my (cough) world-famous Irish cream liqueur. Details for this treat are posted here.

Sixteen eggs. Beat, then add nine cans of sweetened condensed milk.

Now three tablespoons each instant coffee and chocolate syrup.

Mix well.

After this I transfer things to my largest stock pot before adding a gallon of cream...

...and a gallon of vodka. Let me tell you, this stuff has a kick. Drink it at home when you're not planning on going anywhere.

Next I hauled out my dusty collection of dark-brown bottles donated by friends over the years. Folks know to return the bottles to me after they're empty, so I can re-use them again.

I cleaned them thoroughly, then filled them up with the raw liqueur. Here the wet bottles are draining a bit before I toweled them dry.

This liqueur won't be ripe for a week and should be stored in a dark place during that time. I made sure to label the ripe date so friends would know when they could indulge. A good New Year's treat!

Here's the loot for the day.

I divvied up the cookies into Christmas bags for friends and neighbors.

By the end of the day, I'm worn out. But our gifts are ready.

Tomorrow is our big day of celebration, so I'm off to bed. Hopefully I won't have any more 2:30 am wakeup calls!

Shortbread cookies

One of the specialty things I only make at Christmas (besides Irish cream, of course!) is shortbread.  The secret ingredients to rich and flaky shortbread is butter (no substitutes!) and rice flour. Rice flour is pretty easy to find in most grocery stores. Shortbread has only four ingredients: flour, rice flour, sugar, and butter. I'm not milking Matilda right now, so I used store-bought butter.

Mix the butter and sugar together.  I soften the butter in the microwave then mix it by hand.  You don't need an electric mixer when making shortbread.

Mix the flour and rice flour together.

Then cut the two sets of ingredients together.

If the butter is soft enough you can use a spoon, otherwise you'll have to use your hands.

With regular shortbread (meaning, just flour, butter, and sugar), you can shape the dough however you like for baking.  Some people make large rectangles and later cut them into finger-shaped pieces.  Others make a large circle and cut it into pie-shaped wedges.  Since this particular recipe has rice flour, it's much more flaky than regular shortbread and so won't hold up if you bake it in large shapes.  So I just make small balls and gently flatten them with my palm.  The cookies tend to spread out as they bake, so I don't put more than six per sheet.

Watch the shortbread like a hawk when it's in the oven because it's easy to overbake.  Everyone's ovens are different so I can't give a precise baking time.  In my oven, the cookies take 13 to 14 minutes.  Yes, it's that precise.  Much longer, and the edges get too brown.  These turned out juuuuust a hair browner than I wanted, but not bad.

The cookies are very fragile, so don't manhandle them too much.  I like to let them cool on the cookie sheets for a couple minutes to harden up, then gently transfer them to a cooling rack.

Here's some of the completed batches.  These are given to friends and neighbors for a buttery treat.

Here's the recipe:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup rice flour
1 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar

Mix butter and sugar by hand (soften the butter if need be) until sugar is dissolved.  Separately, mix flour and rice flour together, then add to the butter mixture and knead until dough resembles short crust.  Bake at 350F.

I octupled the recipe and ended up with about eight or nine dozen batches (I lost count). The recipe multiplies very well.

Happy eating!