On the sixth day of Christmas cookies my true love gave to me… 6 chocolate-dipped shortbread cutouts! Aww, thanks! I love love this recipe for shortbread. It is one of my favorite cookies. I feel like I say that a lot, but what can I say, I love me some cookies. My boyfriend and I make them year-round in different shapes based on the season. He will make the dough and put it in the refrigerator, and do the dishes, and then I will roll it out, cut them out, bake them and dip them in chocolate. When I am feeling festive, I add sprinkles! I love the longer “jimmie” sprinkles rather than the nonpareil sprinkles.
I happened to only have the later when I was making these cookies so I ran out the grocery store to get some more. I later discovered that I also had no confectioners’ sugar left to make my next cookie! Don’t you hate when that happens! I had every type of sugar – granulated, light brown, dark brown, and even superfine! I had to change my next cookie recipe up because I was not about to go back to the store. Sprinkles and chocolate are optional and if this recipe looks familiar to you, it’s just a variation of the recipe I use for linzer cookies.
These cookies are great to come home to after a long day of last-minute shopping. Not to toot my own horn, but I don’t have any last minute shopping to do because I bought everything on-line last week…Toot TOOT! I do have some serious baking to do this weekend though!
6 Chocolate Dipped Shortbread Cutouts
Ingredients
- 1½ cups of Butter (3 sticks), at room temperature
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3½ cups AP flour
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 2 cups bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 1 cup sprinkles (optional)
Instructions
- In the bowl of a mixer, add in butter and sugar and mix until combined (using the paddle attachment.) Mix in vanilla extract.
- In a separate bowl whisk together flour and salt.
- With mixer on low, add the dry ingredients into the butter and mix until combined.
- Take dough out on to a floured surface and form into a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- On a floured surface, roll out dough with a rolling pin to ¼-1/2 inch thickness.
- Using a 3 inch cookie cutter, cut out shapes and place them on a silicone baking mat or parchment paper lined baking sheet. Space cookies at least 2 inches away from one another.
- Bake for 15-20 minutes until cookies start to brown on edges.
- To melt chocolate-- In a microwave safe bowl place chocolate chips. On a 50% power setting on the microwave heat the chocolate for 1-1½ minutes. Stir chocolate then continue to heat until melted in 20 seconds intervals until completely smooth or melted.
- Dip cookies in melted chocolate, using a off-set spatula to scrape the chocolate off the bottom of the cookie. Lie on parchment paper. Add sprinkles immediately before chocolate starts to dried. Repeat for all cookies. Let dry before repacking cookies. Eat within three days or freeze.
- *I would recommend higher quality chocolate chips for this process because although I am a huge fan of Nestle chips and Costco chips in cookies, they have added more wax in their chips in the last few years and they do not melt as smoothly. I used Ghiradelli Bittersweet Chocolate chips and they melted perfectly. For smoother chocolate you can even used baking bars of chocolate which have even less wax in them resulting in smoother chocolate.
How many dozen does this recipe yield?
Hi Katie- It makes about 3-4 dozen depending on the size of the cutout cookies you are making!
Happy Holidays!
m