Notes:
If you don't want to cut out and decorate shapes, you could always roll the dough out and just cut it into squares or rectangles with a knife and eat it as plain shortbread.These cookies also make for great sandwich cookies; I highly recommend filling them with either jam, lemon curd, or banoffee pie filling.
Shortbread Cookies
Ingredients
- 3 sticks (1.5 cups or 340g) unsalted butter, ideally Kerrygold
- 1 cup (130 g) powdered sugar
- 3 cups (425g) all-purpose flour
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla
Steps
- Add the flour and salt to a small bowl and stir to combine.
- Add the butter and sugar to the bowl of a stand mixer and attach the mixer's paddle attachment to the mixer.
- Using the stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy.
- Add the vanilla and mix on low speed until fully combined.
- Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the flour and salt mixture to the creamed butter and sugar, and mix on low speed until just evenly combined (scraping down the sides of the bowl and the paddle as needed). Try not to overmix it once it's evenly mixed.
- Divide the dough into 3-4 balls, flatten each ball into a small disk, and wrap each disk in wax paper.
- Place the wrapped disks in the fridge for 4-6 hours until firm.
- Using a rolling pin and working with one disk of dough at a time, roll the dough out onto a lightly floured surface to a ½ inch thickness (can be slightly thicker if you want, but try not to go much thinner).
- Cut out desired shapes with cookie cutters and place on ungreased cookie sheets (optionally lined with parchment paper). Decorate as desired with sprinkles and/or colored sugars.
- Chill the decorated cookie sheets in the fridge for 10-15 minutes. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 325°F.
- Bake the cookies for 17-20 minutes until just lightly golden brown on the bottom (you can carefully flip one cookie to check the bottom before pulling the whole sheet out; they'll also start to smell amazing once they're pretty much done).
- Cool on wire racks. Then, as my mom would say: "Weep with joy when you eat one. Give to people you love very much."
Notes:
If you don't want to cut out and decorate shapes, you could always roll the dough out and just cut it into squares or rectangles with a knife and eat it as plain shortbread.These cookies also make for great sandwich cookies; I highly recommend filling them with either jam, lemon curd, or banoffee pie filling.