Recipe: Shortbreads Dipped in Chocolate

Recipe Source (shortbreads): Malgieri, Nick.  Cookies Unlimited.  HarperCollins Publishers, 2000 pp. 104 - 5. 

I'm not entirely sure why Christmas, as a holiday, is so firmly associated with cookies.  I don't much care why either.  Cookies are certainly an important part of my Christmas memories.  I remember baking them with my mom and sister every year.  They're a part of my future Christmases too, because I fully intend to carry on the cookie baking tradition with my own daughter.  And they're a part of my Christmas present, because let me tell you any season where you can get away with making tons of cookies and distributing them to everyone you know and eating them whenever the spirit moves you is certainly a gift in my book! 

This past weekend was a busy one, and a very special one for me and my family.  My friends threw me a wonderful baby shower, which was much more fun than baby showers usually are.  Both my family (parents, sister and aunt) and my husband's family (parents) came to town for the occasion.  This rarely happens.  In fact, I don't think that our families had gotten together since our wedding five and a half years ago, since John's family comes from New Jersey and mine lives in Upstate New York.  Anyway, we thought it would be nice to decorate the Christmas tree together as a family.  We ate together and we decorated together, and it was a very nice event indeed. 

I originally planned to have five different types of cookie on the table.  After all, if you can't go overboard at Christmas, when can you go overboard?  Unfortunately, I only managed to get through two.  (If anyone out there reading this is considering pregnancy, you should be warned that the metabolic drain is just staggering.  Especially in the third trimester.)  This was one of the two cookies, and I promised my mother in law that I would try to post the recipe by Tuesday.  I made no changes to the original cookie recipe.  The chocolate glaze, however, is original.  Essentially, I wanted chocolate, so I was going to get chocolate.  The rosewater was a spur of the moment addition, prompted by my love of rosewater.  The flavor didn't come through all that strongly. 

One more note before I get to the recipe.  As Mr. Malgieri notes in hisintroductory notes, the butter you use here is important.  These are shortbreads.  The quality of the butter essentially is the flavor of your cookie.  Ordinarily, while I don't personally use some of the faux butter products (like margarine or that 50-50 butter and canola oil spread), I wouldn't tell you so firmly not to use them yourselves, because you need to do what you need to do.  In this case, though, I'm going to say to make sure you use real, proper, unsalted butter.  It's Christmas, splurge a little.  It will have a very pronounced effect on your finished product. 

Shortbreads Dipped in Chocolate (makes 36 cookies; approx. $0.16/cookie)

3 1/2 sticks butter, divided

2/3 cup sugar

3 1/4 cups flour

2 tablespoons soy milk if necessary (you can use regular milk, I used soy because that's what we had on hand.)

8 ounces dark chocolate chunks

1 tablespoon rosewater

Equipment:

• Cookie sheets lined with foil
• Double boiler (I use a metal bowl set over a regular saucepan of simmering water.)
• Stand mixer with the paddle attachment
• Rolling pin
• Cookie cutters

1. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.
2. Combine the sugar and 2 1/2 sticks of butter in the stand mixer and beat until fluffy on medium speed.
3. Fold in the flour with clean hands.  I'm not kidding, I thought it looked a little odd myself but it really did work better this way.
4. I found that the dough was too dry to stick together and added a couple tablespoons of milk to the dough.  Your results may vary.
5. Roll out a small amount of dough on a clean work surface.  The original recommended a floured work surface, but honestly I found that I didn't need the extra flour.  Roll the dough to about 3/8". 
6. Use the cookie cutters to cut out shapes from the dough.  Repeat until all the dough is used up.  It is just fine to re-incorporate and re-roll scraps - why waste all that dough? 
7. Bake 15 - 20 minutes, or until a very pale gold. 
8. Cool on wire racks.  Do not be tempted to proceed until the cookies are cool.  They will crumble into dust. 
9. When the cookies are cool, melt the remaining 1 stick of butter and the dark chocolate chunks in the double boiler, stirring constantly. 
10. Remove from heat and add approx. 1 tablespoon rosewater.  Mix well.
11. Dip part of each cookie into the chocolate glaze and let dry before serving.