Amaretto Shortbread Cookies With a Christmas Twist

Holidays and family gatherings always are fulfilled with happiness, food, desserts, cookies and.. stress for sure. I can bet you’ll find yourself in the kitchen craving something sweet or wanting to make a gift for a good friend at least once these Holidays, and this super simple recipe could be one amazing opportunity to impress your grandma and even rich aunt Margaret.

For the cookies you’ll need:

2 1/2 cups (300g) flour

1 cup (220g) soft butter

3/4 cup (100g) powdered sugar

1 tbs Amaretto liquer (or vanilla extract)

For decorating you’ll need:

1/3 cup (70g) heavy cream

1 cup (170g) white chocholate

1 tsp Christmas spice

Sprinkles and edible glitter powder

This recepie is as simple as kneading dough ingridients into a ball, letting it rest, melting glaze ingridients together, baking cookies at 180C for 13 minutes and decorating them, but if you have lust to read a lot more extended instructions, follow me trough the steps and I can guarantee, you’ll bake the best looking cookies on the family table.

Start with putting flour, softened butter, powdered sugar and Amaretto liquer into a bowl. For the best results I suggest using stand mixer, but even your biggest plastic bowl will work amazing. This recipe is so easy, that you don’t have a lot of opportunities to mess something up except for one thing - butter temperature. This recipe calls for using softened butter. If you forget to take it out of the fridge few hours before making cookies, don’t worry, just cut it into small pieces and put it in the microwave for 30 secs and try not to melt it. When it’s done, mix all together on low to medium speed. If using your big plastic bowl, just use your hands until mixture comes together and is well corporated.

Now it’s time to take the dough out of the bowl and knead it into a ball. Don’t forget to flour the working surface, otherwise dough will stick to it and turn all the cookie making experience frustrating. When the dough stops cracking and becomes as a smooth sphere, wrap plastic wrap around and put the dough in fridge for 30 mins to chill, because nobody likes working without a coffee break.

While the dough (and you) are resting, make the Christmas glaze. Just put white chocolate, heavy cream and ground Christmas spice (it even could be hotwine spice) into a small pot and melt it over the stove while mixing until smooth and runny. Pour it in a piping bag (your ziplock bag will work fine as well) and let it rest.

Take the dough out of the fridge and roll it out about 6 mm thick. You know what to do next - choose your best cookie cutters, press them into the dough and put the cookies on a lined sheetpan. Now your cookie army is ready to go sunbathing at 180C (350F) for about 13 mins. Watch them closely as they tend to turn brown quickly. Even if they seem a little underbaked, they will harden while cooling down.

And now it’s THE time. Cut off a tiny corner of the piping bag (or ziplock bag), squeeze the icing back and forth until it looks nice, then find your best sprinkles and simply sprinkle them on. Don’t overload, so the cookies look neat and elegant. Now let the magic happen - dust each cookie with edible glitter powder. And this is it, your cookies look simple and neat yet elegant - just the way a cookie should look like.

Arrange them in a nice little box filled with lovely notes or just put them on the Christmas table for everyone to enjoy. And this is how you become grandmas most beloved grandchild!