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Salted Nut Shortbread Cookies |
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Tuesday, 16 December 2008 |
My wife and I saw a picture for cookies like these in a glossy magazine and determined that we would make them at once. But when we did, we found the recipe yielded a cookie layer without the perfect crunch of our favorite shortbread and the formula did not fit our best cookie baking sheet, so we adapted our own family formula for shortbread, one using powdered sugar instead of granulated, then topped the cookies with nuts that had been crushed under the rolling pin and a generous sprinkling of “Sugar in the Raw,” a popular brand of turbinado sugar, pure unwashed evaporated cane juice in fairly large crystals. Some salted mixed nut mixtures include more peanuts than others; these cookies are best with “Fancy Mixed Nut” blends that use fewer peanuts. We like the mixed nuts from Costco.
(Makes 4 dozen)
For the shortbread layer:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
For the Nut Layer:
2 cups fancy salted mixed nuts
2 tablespoons turbinado sugar, see head note
1.) Preheat oven to 350 and line an 18 x13-inch baking sheet, also known as a “Half sheet pan” with a single piece of baker’s parchment cut to fit the pan.
2.) In a food processor, combine flour, powdered sugar and salt. Add butter and process until mixture is crumbly. Continue processing, pulsing the motor on and off until the mixture begins to come together to form a smooth ball of dough.
3.) Roll the cookie dough on the baker’s parchment into a rectangle to fill the pan. The parchment may be lifted out of the pan and placed on the countertop to be used as a template; that way, the handles of the rolling pin won’t hit the sides of the baking sheet. The shortbread dough should be very thin. Transfer the rolled dough to the baking sheet using the parchment liner.
4.) Crush the mixed nuts under a rolling pin to break them into fairly uniform pieces no more than 1/4 –inch thick then scatter the crushed nuts evenly over the surface of the shortbread layer; sprinkle the turbinado sugar over the nuts and roll the rolling pin over the sugared nuts to press them into the dough. Bake the cookies until they are browned and crisp, about 18 minutes.
5.) While the cookies are still warm, use a pizza cutter to cut the pan of the cooled cookies into 6 strips lengthwise and 4 across, to yield 24 generous rectangles, each about 2-inches by 4-inches. Cool the cookies completely before serving. They will crisp as they cool.
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