The Shortbread Slump
Well, we had a good run with our first ten posts, huh? As you may have guessed from the twelve-day gap between this blog and my last, it’s true: Roughly 100 Cookies has hit a bit of a slump.
It’s not that I haven’t been baking — in fact, I’ve found that the project unlocked a capacity for kitchen time I never knew I had. I’ve baked soda bread, homemade cinnamon rolls, and the three latest cookbook recipes in the past two weeks; I just haven’t felt like writing about them. The end of the Classics chapter focuses on short-dough cookies, and those crisp, crumbly boys aren’t high on my favorites list. I’ve struggled to corral them into a fawning blog post, but my pace at this point is hurtling me towards a bottleneck — so favorite or not, the time has come.
The three short kings on order today are Sablés, Chocolate Bourbon Sablés, and Shortbread. I had neither the appetite nor the bourbon for making full-sized rounds of all these, so what I made instead was a sablé batch split between plain and chocolate-flecked and a half-batch of shortbread laced with lemon.
I’m spending this month in an Airbnb in New England, so unlike back home, I can’t pawn half my baked goods off on my boyfriend. My one friend living in the area is vegan, making her tragically unhelpful in my efforts to pare down my supply — but what she can offer is a workplace where some of her colleagues work IRL. (What’s that like?) Upon realizing that the sablé batch made about 35 more cookies than I could eat before they went stale, she kindly delivered some to her coworkers, whose praise was much more effusive than any I have to offer.
According to one Gen Z-er, the sablés were “A1” and “mad good.” She said they remind her of the cookies from those blue tins that grandmas use for sewing kits, which is actually a stunningly apt comparison. These cookies have a great snap to them, and, had I used my beloved Kerrygold instead of the generic store brand butter that was all I could find for delivery, they could have been deliciously rich.
As they were, though, I found them just okay, and I moved quickly to the next bake. I’ve never been a huge shortbread fan, so I intentionally halved this batch. This somehow did nothing to reduce its heft. The instructions said to shape the dough into a disk to eventually cut into wedges, which I did. But it neglected to tell me how thin the disk should be. I kept mine stout, assuming it would flatten in the oven, and uh, that did not happen! There’s nothing wrong with these cookies, but they’re about 3/4” thick — and I don’t really want to eat what’s effectively a full pie slice every time I have a cookie. If you’re a shortbread fan, by all means, make Sarah Kieffer’s recipe. Just try to roll them somewhat thinner than your average paperback novel.
Only Cutout Cookies remain in Chapter One, and, given that they involve frosting, I have relatively high hopes. (I also have high stakes, considering I dragged three cookie cutters across the country for this.) Stay tuned for those, and, if you’re waiting for a return to chocolatier treats, hang in there — I have a feeling you’ll like Chapter Two.