Christmas Baking: Basic Butter Shortbread

 A simple shortbread cookie has to be my all time favourite. There is something so purely festive about it. 

To me, if Christmas had one single representative flavour, it would be this.

Crisp buttery goodness.

This is what the holidays are all about!

(And the nice thing about shortbread is that it's super easy... I managed to pull this off with a 3 week old newborn baby in the house!)

Read on for the recipe....

Basic Butter Shortbread Cookies

(Recipe from Anna Olson)

Makes 1 9-inch square pan, cuts into 36 shortbread squares

Ingredients:

• 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• ¹⁄2 cup icing sugar, sifted
• ¹⁄4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2¹⁄4 cups all-purpose flour
• ¹⁄4 cup brown or white rice flour
• ¹⁄4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 375°F and grease a 9 inch square pan.

Beat the butter for 2 minutes, to make it fluffy and light. Add the icing sugar and sugar and beat again for 2 minutes until fluffy. Beat in the vanilla, then add the flour, rice flour and salt, stirring until evenly blended.

Scrape the dough into the prepared pan and press it flat into the bottom of the pan (the dough is quite firm and easy to press, but if your fingers do stick, dust them with a little flour). Use a fork to dock the shortbread at 1inch intervals, then bake for about 25 minutes until the outside edges of the shortbread have browned a little. Let the shortbread cool for 10 minutes, then cut the shortbread into squares. Let the cookies cool completely before lifting them out of the pan to store.

The shortbread will keep in an airtight container for up to a week.