Chocolate Dipped Shortbread Stars

Its that time of year and many of us are making cookies.  Some of us have been making a lot of cookies!  I wanted to make a cut-out cookie so I could use my Nanny's copper star cookie cutter.  It makes me wish she were here baking with me whenever I do make cookies and that part is hard - because we did spend so much time together in the kitchen making my sugar cookie recipe for special events that I volunteered for.

I made big stars and little stars and I know that Nanny would have loved them.  I also made a shortbread round that I kind of dropped when removing it from the pan and it landed on my cookbook.  Fortunately I salvaged as much as I could and dipped bits and pieces alike in the chocolate and decorated with sprinkles.  Although they weren't the prettiest, they would still be tasty!

The butter makes the cookie just melt in your mouth.  I decided that with these stars I would dip them in some candy coating - both vanilla and chocolate and decorate with colored sugar crystals and some gold and pearl dust powder.  I also used lime zest instead of lemon zest (Rachel used lemon).

It is kind of appropriate that I used this cookie cutter in particular because the person who I got this recipe from made my nanny's cookie recipe for Taste & Create way back when we were paired together July 2008!

Last month Min of Bad Girl's Kitchen emailed several of us who had participated in Taste & Create in the past and extended a special invitation to join in this month.  As a result, there are quite a few of us who are posting for Taste & Create this month.  I was paired with Rachel of Tangerine's Kitchen and picked the recipe for Shortbread Daisies.

Rachel found the recipe for these shortbread cookies on Martha Stewart's website.  I headed over there for measurements because I'm not good at converting Celsius to Fahrenheit and I couldn't see how long to bake these for on Rachel's blog.  I found on the Martha website she said to bake these for 50 minutes.  I really believe that is a typo!  Maybe it should be 15 instead...because that is how long I baked mine for.  I ended up watching the cookies and pulled them out of the oven when they had started to brown and felt firm in the center of the cookie.  Depending on how big you make your cookies will probably depend on how long you bake them, however, I think at 50 minutes they would probably be really, really browned 😉

Chocolate Dipped Shortbread Stars

Ingredients:
1 cup butter
2 cups flour
¾ teaspoon salt
zest of 1 lime
½ cup confectioner's sugar (it also states you could use granulated but I went with confectioner's)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Sift together flour and salt in a small bowl.  In a larger bowl cream butter and lime zest until fluffy.  Add sugar and beat until light in color and fluffy.  Add flour mixture and beat on low until flour is just incorporated and dough sticks together.

This is where you can vary how you make these.  You can pat them in a round on a cookie sheet so you can cut them when removed and slightly cooled from the oven or you can wrap the dough in some plastic wrap, flatten it into a circle and refrigerate for about an hour.  You can then roll the dough out (I did so between the plastic wrap so it wouldn't stick) and then cut into desired shapes.

Bake until cookies start to brown and are firm in the center.  Time will vary depending on the size of your cookies.

If you decide to dip these, be careful - they are very fragile.  You could always opt to drizzle them with chocolate instead, or just eat them plain.  They are great no matter what way they are served.