| It’s Shortbread Week at the Cookie Challenge Countdown and we have some prizes to give away: Kristen L wins a Confetti Sweets GC; Michele D wins an Italian Centre Shop GC and MSE wins a Darling GC. Congratulations! You have all been emailed. Shortbread is the gold standard of Christmas cookies. Whether the classic wedge, a finger (like Walker’s), or a lovely round cookie—we love our shortbread. It’s rich and crumbly, keeps well and there are so many variations to enjoy. Tip of the week: The offset spatula! This style of spatula makes quick work of getting shortbread out of the pan and sliding cookies off the sheet. Find a selection of sizes at Bella Casa, Heart of the Home, Knifewear and Nella West Food Equipment.
Shortbread is a formula: 1:2:3—sugar: butter: flour—by weight. But every recipe has its own quirk, some want you to rest the dough, some start with cold butter in chunks, others with room temperature butter, some are all icing sugar, others, a mix of sugars. The classic Scottish shortbread uses berry sugar; Canadian shortbread uses brown sugar; and one featured today uses honey. Cookie maven Rose Levy Beranbaum says that Scottish cooks work the flour in with their fingers and that every cook’s technique lends a specific character to the dough. We’ll see! We have Levy Beranbaum’s classic Scottish shortbread, but Canadian-style with brown sugar. We have Leanne Smoliak’s espresso hazelnut shortbread, the Ted Lasso cookie and a tasty rosemary shortbread. Shortbread is easy to customize—mix in cranberry and chocolate, dried haskap berries or lemon zest. The quality of the ingredients is paramount, use your best butter and unbleached, all-purpose flour (the Scots have been known to use some rice flour). The most important thing? Cream the butter and sugar well but don’t overwork the dough—that leads to tough shortbread. |
 Rosemary Shortbread Fresh rosemary offers a subtle hint of pine and a savoury note; the honey contributes flavour and moisture. It’s an easy recipe, good for shortbread newbies. It’s also delicious made with fresh thyme instead of rosemary. Thinking that cardamom might be the next herbaceous go to. Adapted from a recipe found on Epicurious.  |
Italian Espresso Hazelnut Shortbread Leanne Smoliak makes a wonderfully nutty shortbread with espresso powder, let’s call it breakfast shortbread. It would also make a suberb crust for a chocolatey square. Be careful after adding the nuts, I overprocessed. |
Haskap Shortbread Adapted from the classic shortbread recipe by Smitten Kitchen. Deb Perelman (Smitten Kitchen) uses a nifty technique to cut the shortbread in the pan. I found some dried Rosy Farms haskap berries, nice and tart, but you could use dried blueberries or sour cherries instead. |
Ted Lasso Shortbread We found this recipe a few years back during the Ted Lasso heyday. It’s similar to Smitten Kitchen’s standard shortbread recipe, with less detail, but we still like to call it the Ted Lasso cookie. We make it with lemon zest, so good. |
Brown Sugar Shortbread Called the Canadian shortbread, brown sugar creates a deeper, richer flavour, and a less soft texture. If you plan to make cookies rather than a disc, increase the butter by another ¼ cup. You could use regular sugar or berry sugar in addition to the icing sugar instead of brown sugar. Adapted from Rosy Levi Beranbaum’s Scottish Shortbread Wedges from Rose’s Christmas Cookies (1991 edition). |
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A big part of busy Decembers at Confetti Sweets are the holiday tins—ideal for the hard-to-buy-for and a lifesaver for corporate clients. “We work closely with our clients to make them look good,” says Kathy Leskow, CEO (cookie eating officer); “and we want to make it easy for them too.” Send Confetti a list of recipients and the bright pink delivery van comes to spread the Christmas cheer. The more notice the better, but we work hard to accommodate last minute orders,” says Kathy. “It’s part of our culture, we all jump in to make things happen. We hire Christmas elves—my kids and my staff’s kids and their friends. There are so many bows to tie on cookie tins—we need all the help we can get! After 15 years we know now that by mid-December there will be late nights, early mornings and the sounds of delirious laughter (sometimes tears) in the bakery from lack of sleep. I remember this order: we had just finished tying the bows on over 100 tins of cookies, only to realize we did the wrong bow colour (more of that delirious laugher and some tears.) “We get by on lots of caffeine, and by the time we close on Christmas Eve, we are ready for a break. But, as stressful as it is, and although we aren’t perfect, every year we get a little better, and we love bringing the joy.
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