Colourful white chocolate shortbread cookies.

On my list of Christmas baking; shortbread cookies are one of my absolute favourite.  I cannot imagine Christmas without the buttery richness and slightly sandy texture shortbread offers.  When I was growing up, my mom would make lovely whipped shortbread cookies always topped with a candied red or green cherry.  I remember nibbling away at the outside of the cookie until I had nothing left but the cherry which I refused to eat!

My version of shortbread is very different - slightly denser in texture and no cherries in sight.  Instead, I like to dip each cookie in colourful sanding sugar and fill with a small square of white chocolate before baking in the oven.  Using sanding sugar in a variety of festive colours make the cookies look irresistibly beautiful and impressive.  The addition of white chocolate is pleasantly surprising and adds a nice boost of vanilla flavour without being over-powering.  I recommend buying a good quality white chocolate for this recipe, and would not advise using white chocolate chips.  I love white chocolate, but lesser quality varieties have a strange after taste that I just can't get past.  If you don't like white chocolate, you could certainly leave it out or substitute with another type of chocolate.  However, I've tried making this recipe with dark or milk chocolate and found it completely over-powered the shortbread flavour.

Here's my recipe:

1 1/4 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
1/3 cup icing sugar
1/4 cup corn starch
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 bars of good quality white chocolate, broken or cut into squares.  I use Lindt chocolate http://www.lindt.ca/swf/eng/products/bars/white-chocolate/.

Preheat oven to 350 F and line a couple of cookie sheets with parchment paper.

In a medium mixing bowl, add the butter and stir a bit before incorporating the icing sugar (this helps prevent the icing sugar from going everywhere when you start stirring it with the butter.  Then sift the icing sugar over the butter and mix to combine.  Sift in the corn starch, all purpose flour and mix slightly.  Then add the salt and vanilla and continue to stir until the dough comes together with no bits of flour left at the bottom of the bowl.  The dough should be pliable and have the consistency of very soft pie crust dough.

Pull off a generous tablespoon of dough and roll into a ball,  Press one square of white chocolate into the ball of cookie dough and roll again between your palms to ensure the chocolate is encapsulated in the dough.  Dip the ball into decorative sanding sugar (whatever colour(s) you like).  Place on a baking sheet and repeat with the remaining dough spacing each cookie about 2 inches apart, ending up with about 2 dozen.

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until the cookies are slightly golden around the edges.  Let cool on the cookie sheet before moving the cookies to a tin or container.  They are quite delicate and will fall apart if handled when still warm.

Merry Christmas!