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Recipe: Shortbread Stars
Summary: December 13 - A Cookie A Day Until Christmas! Thanks to Julie for sharing this recipe. A nice lemon cookie will bring some variety to your holiday baking... "I love to bake cookies at Christmas. I never make these that someone doesn't ask me for the recipe." - Julie
Ingredients
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- ¾ teaspoons salt
- 1½ cups butter (3 sticks), softened
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon zest
- 1½ teaspoon lemon extract
- ¼ teaspoon almond extract
Lemon Glaze_
- 1½ cups powdered sugar
- 4-5 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
- 1½ teaspoons fresh lemon zest
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325°.
- Combine dry ingredients and set aside. In large bowl cream butter and sugar until creamy and pale yellow in color, occasionally scraping bowl. Beat in lemon zest and extracts.
- Reduce speed and gradually beat in flour mixture until blended, occasionally scraping down bowl.
- Roll between sheets of parchment or on a silicone baking mat to ½" thickness. Use a floured 2-3" star-shaped cookie cutter to cut out as many cookies as possible. With a floured 1" star cookie cutter, cut out center of each star. Reserve centers and trimmings to re-roll.
- With lightly floured wide spatula, carefully place cookies 1" apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes or until edges are barely golden. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool.
- While cookies are baking and cooling, prepare lemon glaze. Dip top side of each warm cookie into glaze and set back on wire rack to dry.
Quick Notes
Don't treat this dough like a sugar cookie. The high butter content will give you an unworkable brick if you chill it. You CAN, however, put it briefly and well wrapped into the freezer for about 10 minutes if it just gets too soft to work with while rolling. I tend to add a little more flour during the rolling and cutting process to make a slightly sturdier cookie. This also helps it keep it's shape while baking.
If the glaze thickens while dipping, you can add a little water to thin it. Resist the urge to use more lemon juice, it will make it too tart.
You can use any shape to cut the cookies. I like to use the stars at Christmas and then sprinkle them with gold or yellow sanding sugar while the glaze is still wet.
The number of cookies you get from the recipe will depend on the size of your cutter.
These cookies freeze well if well-wrapped up to about three months. I often make a batch with my Thanksgiving baking, freeze them without glazing, and then pull them out and glaze them as part of my Christmas cookie frenzy.
Cooking time (duration): 40
Meal type_ dessert
Microformatting by hRecipe.