So the CSA's over; now it's just time for fun stuff. Christmas cookies. I got Star Wars cookie cutters a couple of years ago and at that time, made "regular" sugar cookies and spent quite a lot of time decorating them. They came out pretty cool (see below) but it was a lot of work!
This year I thought I would forgo the icing and made the dough itself in interesting flavors. I also went for shortbread, since...super simple and delicious! I settled on three flavors to match up with 3 characters:
- Cranberry - Ginger Stormtroopers
- Matcha Green Tea Yodas
There is also a Boba Fett cookie cutter...I probably could have come up with a fourth flavor, but I didn't think I wanted to make THAT many cookies.
For the basic shortbread dough, I used this for each batch:
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
- 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
- 2 cups flour
For the Darth Vaders, I got a bar of Ghiradelli 70% cocoa, melted half of it in the microwave and added it to the creamed butter & sugar before adding the flour. I think I added some vanilla too. I probably could have added even more chocolate or maybe some cocoa...the dough didn't taste quite as dark-chocolately as I'd hoped. Before baking, I sprinkled the cookies with habanero sugar (more on that here). The baked cookies didn't taste particularly spicy at all, just a little bit of warmth that kicked in after a couple bites. I'd been cautious because the creme brulee I'd made with the habanero sugar (cut about 50% with regular sugar) was fairly spicy. So, I think if you'd like really spicy cookies you could add some cayenne/chipotle powder to the dough as well. Since I had the other half of the chocolate bar, I decided to melt that, dipped the "helmets" in it, and sprinkled on more habanero sugar. This did add a little more of the dark chocolate & spicy flavors, but they are still fairly tame (at least to my taste).
For the Stormtroopers, I chopped a good handful each of dried cranberries and crystallized ginger, and also added the zest of a lemon to the dough. These are really tasty, probably my favorite flavor of the bunch. Perhaps you can pretend that the cranberries are wounds from the stormtroopers getting shot. Errr...or not. I guess they never did much besides fall over and emit a bit of smoke from the laser hits.
For the Yodas, I added two tablespoons of Matcha (green tea powder) to the flour before adding that to the butter/sugar mixture. Matcha is a pretty expensive ($18 at Whole Foods for a Republic of Tea canister) finely ground high-quality green tea. It's a fairly intense flavor and supposedly has more antioxidants/health benefits than regular green tea. Y'know, to counter the .66 tablespoon of butter in each cookie. So...lovely color to these, and pretty intense green tea flavor. They are definitely a not-too-sweet (I even sprinkled them with some "sanding sugar" before baking) acquired taste of a cookie, but successful I think! Oh, I also added the zest of one lime to the dough for these, but could barely taste it. Could probably do a couple of limes if you want that flavor to be more pronounced.
The basic shortbread recipe I used said to bake these at 325 for 15-20 minutes. I did that with the first batch and they were not done (I also used "air bake" cookie sheets which take longer, I think). I upped the temp to about 335 and then even 350, but they still took at least 20 minutes to get barely brown.
Oh, and pro tip - if you make the dough the day before like I did, remember that shortbread dough turns back into pretty much solid butter when you chill it. Leave plenty of time for it to sit out at room temp before you roll it, and/or be prepared to use your muscles!
These were fun, tasty and different - and definitely MUCH less work than meticulously painting icing on like I did before:
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