I love shortbread. I realize now that all my prior interactions with shortbread have been inferior. It would be a similar realization for someone whose family is lactose intolerant and raised on cheez whiz, to suddenly have a slice of Roquefort cheese with a tart green apple and a glass of bubbly. Life changing. Granted, there's always a place for cheez whiz so I am not putting down the great staple of cheese steak sandwiches. I am merely voicing appreciation for the many different varieties of shortbread. Especially the ones that I've made recently.
Yesterday night, in a fit of inspiration and strangely channeled laziness, I decided to make american-sized jam thumbprint cookies, which I've named Apricot Jam Tarts. Sticking with the theme of cookie-bar, everything I make must have more of the good stuff. In this case, the good stuff is the jam-saturated shortbread portion of a thumbprint cookie. I used two sticks of high quality butter, a reckless pour of vanilla extract (drat, I just remembered that I used it all up, must buy more), powdered sugar (it does wonders for the texture), and NO OATMEAL. Here's where the laziness came in. I didn't want to spend the mental energy figuring out how to make this "healthy" with lots of "fiber" and "texture." Instead I wanted the chewy, buttery crumb of the shortbread to gently caress the homemade fuzzy apricot jam in a sweet embrace that whispered "Lowenstein" in the wind. I wanted these cookies to evoke memories of sandy beaches and early morning shorelines on the Atlantic for people who have never seen the ocean.
Part two of my laziness involved using large cupcake trays rather than mini ones because I didn't want to press shortbread into the bottoms of 36 mini tins. Instead, I made 20 big ones. Although I should really start making bigger batches of cookies because my mixer, it's a beast. It almost seems a waste to not put in 14 cups of flour at once. 2 cups of flour for the shortbread looked so lonely and minuscule at the bottom of the behemoth bowl. After baking the shortbread for a ridiculous amount of time, I learned a valuable lesson. I keep tweaking the recipe in ways that prolong the baking time. Here, I learned that I should most likely bake the shortbread tart cups first, and then add jam, and maybe a light broil or torch. Otherwise, I end up baking the freaking things for an hour while still freaking out about how the middle might be raw and gross. It's impossible to tell when the tray is still hot because the shortbread is soft and pliable. And falls apart. Resulting in the need to eat 3 of them at midnight.
In conclusion, these are really tasty. I'm going to add a bit more flour because it seemed a little crumbly. A bit more flour and a bit more cornstarch but otherwise the texture of the shortbread is delicious. I will write about this on Kickstarter.
Otherwise, in my life: the tree pollen today has really dampened any desire to open my eyes and greet the world. I have such a sinus/middle-head ache and sensitivity to light that I feel drugged. My cat is the most likely suspect for slipping ruffies into my water. That sly, furry, fox-lover is actually a dangerous and experienced double agent. With one paw she slinks into my bedroom and purrs affectionately, and with the other paw, she simultaneously sell my secrets to the Bolsheviks!
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