Buttery Irish shortbread cookies are the perfect tea time treat. Bake a batch to share with friends during the holiday season, they travel well and can be stored in a cookie tin for up to a week.
PREP TIME 15 minutesminutes
COOK TIME 1 hourhour
TOTAL TIME 1 hourhour15 minutesminutes
YIELD 30cookies
Ingredients
1 1/2cups(3 sticks) buttersoftened, Irish Kerry Gold butter would be an ideal choice
3/4cupsuperfine sugar
1tablespoonvanilla
2 1/2cupsflour
1/2teaspoonsalt
2tablespoonssugarfor dusting the top of the shortbread
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 300°F. Set out a 9x13-inch baking pan.
Add the softened butter and superfine sugar to the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat them together and scraped down the sides of the bowl to make sure they are well mixed. Then increase the speed to high and beat for 10 minutes, scraping the bowl again half way through. This adds lots of air to the butter.
Add the vanilla and beat it into the butter and sugar.
Combine the flour and salt in a separate mixing bowl before pouring them into the butter mixture. Beat them in until well combined.
Press the prepared dough into the baking pan. The dough will be quite sticky so it helps to slightly dampen your hands and pat it into place.
Sprinkle the last 2 tablespoons of regular table sugar over the top of the shortbread.
Bake for 1 hour or until the cookies have turned lightly golden brown.
Give the shortbread 3 - 4 minutes to cool and then use a paring knife to score the dough into cookie finger shapes. Slice the dough into 3 long equal strips (2 cuts each 1/3 of the way into the width of the dough, see photos in post above for visual reference.) Then slice the dough crosswise so each shortbread cookie is about 1-inch wide. You'll make about 10 cuts which will form 33 long, rectangular cookies.
Once the cookies have been sliced, use the tines of a fork to gently poke holes in the surface of each cookie in an even pattern. See photos above.
Be sure to let the shortbread cool completely in the pan before serving or the buttery cookies will crumble when you try to life them out.