Gwynne Tenney
@gtenneycourant
I’m not and have never claimed to be a professional-quality chef, but I love to bake, and my family loves when I do. So when I called my grandma for her famously “fool proof” Christmas shortbread recipe, I thought I’m going to crush this a million times over. I really didn’t crush it at all. I figured, since it’s so easy, I could add visual appeal by making the cookies red and green. I think it’s safe to say that this desire backfired.
The recipe calls for:
- 1 pound of butter softened to room temperature
- 1 cup of sugar
- 4 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour
Because I wanted to make my final product two different colors, I’d have to split the recipe in half and color one batch red and one batch green. I started on the right foot. Well, I was too lazy to wait for the butter to soften so I put it in the microwave for thirty seconds, but it worked just the same.
After the butter softened, I put a half pound in the mixer until creamy. This was more difficult than it sounds; I had to keep pushing it out of the middle of the whisk.
I then added the half cup of sugar and continued to mix (and push out from the whisk) until the butter and sugar were mixed together. This is where it got sticky, and I don’t mean from the butter. You have to add the flour in increments of a cup, and while I was feeling totally boss, I forgot that I was cutting the recipe in half. I ended up adding three cups of flour to the red batch instead of two.
So, while the recipe should have been a delicious walk in the park, it ended up being a delicious, crumbly mess, and the colors just made it look pink and moldy. This is definitely a great, cost-efficient gift for anyone who likes to eat, but please, don’t make my mistake. Leave out the color, make one batch of the shortbread, and watch your friends and/or family beg for more.
