Sharing My Mom’s Delicious Shortbread Cookies!

Sharing My Mom’s Delicious Shortbread Cookies!

Shortbread Cookies With Jam
Shortbread Cookies With Jam

My mom and her sisters are famous for their shortbread cookies. My grandmother shared this recipe with her daughters, and each one of them has her own way of baking them. One of my aunts adds cocoa powder and uses chocolate icing instead of jam, but I digress. I can tell you that these shortbread cookies are delicious and very easy to make!

I love to bake and started making these for my husband’s family when I first met them. They love these cookies and have been known to hide them from each other. My husband gets these for our anniversary or New Year’s every year.

Shortbread’s main ingredient is butter, so using the best butter you can find is important. I used Gay Lea’s Baker’s Gold, part of their new line of specialty butters. It’s 84% milk fat, which means less moisture and air in the butter, resulting in flakier and more crispy pastries. Fyi, most butters in North America are only 80% milk fat and most butters in Europe are 82% milk fat.

When I baked these cookies, the house smelled so yummy: you could really smell the butter. The difference I noticed right away was how much crispier these cookies turned out. They held their own when jam was added. Continue reading

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Linzer Cookies- Something New For New Year’s!

Linzer Cookies with Black Cherry Spread from Bonne Maman
Linzer Cookies filled with Black Cherry Spread from Bonne Maman

Jam-filled sablé cookies have always been a holiday tradition in my family – it just wouldn’t be the holiday season without some kind of shortbread cookie in the lineup! In fact, when I used to come home from university, my mom had a box of these yummy cookies frozen and waiting for me. She still does that anytime I go home, no matter what time of year it is.

This holiday season, I tried a new version of jam-filled cookies: Linzer Cookies, from the Holiday Cookies* cookbook by Alice Medrich. The combination of almonds, almond extract, lemon and lime zest made the cookies unique, crunchy, and oh-so-tasty! Linzer cookies are, by definition, made with almonds, and originated in Linz, Austria.

Linzer Cookies made with Black Cherry Spread

Our wedding anniversary is between Christmas and New Year’s and, given that jam cookies are my husband’s most requested cookie, it gives me the perfect excuse to make one more holiday cookie (not that I need one) at this time of year. In fact, my husband reminded me earlier this week that I hadn’t made any this year! He also likes anything with almond flavoring, so these cookies were made for him! And, he loved them.

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