Coffee Shortbread

It's late June 2021 in Seattle where the temperature has just hit 105F and less than 50% of housing in the city has AC. It's so hot and humid outside I'm sweating buckets everytime I need to leave the house to walk the dog (not my dog, but if I have one, it will be a replica of him). My beloved AC is running non-stop. I'm on a self-imposed (and partner imposed) baking ban because it's unreasonable to crank up the oven to 500F for a loaf of sourdough and expect my AC to still keep me cool. So here I am, lounging on the couch binging trashy TV (hello Too Hot Too Handle!) and daydreaming about these amazing coffee shortbread I made a few weeks back. They are everything I want in a cookie: not overly sweet, very tender, very buttery and very very good to just eat a bunch at a time. If I am careful not to over-bake them, they are not at all dry and don't even need coffee or tea for accompaniments (although it's still really nice to have so I can feel like a fancy English person enjoying an afternoon tea). If I under-bake them, they have a nice wet sand texture that is, personally, not un-ideal. Under-baked shortbread is a lot like Vietnamese mung bean pastry (banh dau xanh) but way more moist (weird word, but not sure what else would describe it better). As usual, all ingredients, measurements and instructions including cooking time are suggested. Play around with the recipe and let me know how they turn out!

My recipe is adapted from Food Network's recipe for Rosemary-Lemon Shortbread Cookies.

Ingredients (the amount of cookies you get is dependent on the size of your pan and the size you decide to cut them into):

• 410g ap flour

• 280g / 2.5 sticks of butter (room temp)

• 200g / 1 cup of sugar

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1 tsp vanilla

• 2 tbsp instant coffee powder

• 2 tsp water

Instruction:

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line a 9x13 pan with foil and butter the foil layer. You can also use any other sized pans here (9x9, 8x8, pie plate, muffin tin, etc). The size of the pan will determine the thickness of the shortbread and how many shortbread you will get.

2. Dissolve instant coffee power in water.

3. Cream butter, salt, vanilla, coffee mixture and 170g of sugar on low speed in a stand mixer (or by hand) for a a few minutes until fully incorporated but not airy.

4. Add flour and mix until just incorporated. There are a few ways to do this to avoid a mess if using stand mixer: 1) cover the stand mixer with a kitchen towel so the flour doesn't fly everywhere or 2) add the flour 1/3 or 1/2 at a time or 3) add all of the flour in at once but roughly combine by hand first so the flour doesn't sit on top of the butter mixture.

5. Flop the dough onto the prepared pan and press into an even layer.

6. Now use a fork and pick all over the dough. Think of your worst enemy and then tell yourself everyone deserves kindness and be gentle and careful not to rip the foil because we are not fancy and don't want to spend money on heavy duty foil.

7. Sprinkle the dough with the leftover 30g of sugar. If you somehow have forgotten to leave out some sugar in step 3, honestly, it's not a big deal. It's all going into your stomach anyway.

8. Depending on the thickness of the shortbread layer and the performance of your oven, bake at 350F for 25-40 mins. I would start checking at 20 mins to make sure it is not over baked if you use bigger pan.

9. Cut the shortbread into smaller pieces with a knife or bench scrapper or something with a clean edge immediately straight out of the oven. This is when the shortbread is still very soft and easy to cut. If you wait too long, it will harden and can turn crumbly when cut.

10. Let the cookies cool for 10 mins in the pan then transfer to a rack and let cool completely there.

11. Lastly, nom nom nom!

Find my short 30-second step by step video on Instagram or Tiktok!