High Altitude Vanilla Bean Shortbread Cookies
Soft and buttery shortbread cookies, flecked with real vanilla bean.
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- Food Processor or Pastry Cutter
- Rolling Pin, Bench Scraper and Cookie Cutters
Ingredients
- 3 cups all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- ½ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- ⅛ tsp ground cardamom, optional
- 2 tsp vanilla bean paste or the seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean (or 2 tsp vanilla extract)
- 1 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into 16 pieces
- ¼ cup cold whole milk
Instructions
- In your food processor, pulse the flour, powdered sugar, salt, cardamom and vanilla until combined.With the processor running, drop in the pieces of butter, one at at time, pulsing a few times until the butter is evenly distributed, and the dough is moistened and crumbly.Add the milk, then process until the dough starts to stick together.
- Dump the dough out onto a clean counter and use your hands to finish bringing the dough together, kneading in any stray bits of flour. The dough should be soft, smooth and supple.
- Shape the dough into a flat disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 20 minutes.Prepare two baking sheets by lining them with sheets of parchment paper.
- On a lightly floured surface, place the disk of dough, and dust the top of the dough with flour, too. Roll out to an even thickness of 1/4 inch thick.Use any size/shape cookie cutters to cut as many cookies as you can, placing the cut cookies 1-2 inches apart on the parchment lined baking sheets. Using a 2 - 2 1/2 inch cookie cutter, you'll get about 28 cookies from this recipe.Gather up the scraps of dough, roll them out again, and continue cutting as many cookies as you can.
- Place the baking sheets with the cut cookies in the refrigerator and chill for 1 hour. Chilling the cut cookies helps to ensure they don't spread and hold their shape perfectly while baking.
- Preheat the oven to 350F.Bake the chilled cookies on the center oven rack for about 11 1/2 – 12 minutes. The tops should be a very pale golden with no dark browning, and you should see tiny flaky layers around the edges. If you (very carefully) turn a cookie over with a spatula, the bottom should have light golden browning, with no appearance of raw or wet dough.Note that if your cookies are larger, or your pan is more crowded with the cookies placed close together, it could take from 15-17 minutes to bake the cookies. This is NOT a cookie that you want to under-bake, since a doughy, under-baked shortbread cookie does not have a pleasant texture. So be sure your cookies are fully baked.
- Cool the cookies for 5 minutes on the pan, then very gently transfer them to a cooling rack to cool completely.Shortbread cookies are delicate when warm, so handle with care. The cookies will initially be slightly crisp around the edges, but they soften as they're stored and will remain wonderfully soft and buttery.
- Let your cookies cool completely before frosting and decorating. You can bake the cookies in advance, store in an airtight container, and freeze for 3-6 months until you're ready to frost them.
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