Author Notes
Working with a recipe credited to Dixie Terry, I made some changes to the ingredient deck, but I did have some fun with the decorating. The secret I found to working with this dough is to cream the butter and sugars very well before adding the flour in incremental amounts. After re-rolling the dough several times after using a 2-inch cookie cutter, I started to roll out circles of dough with rough edges, and sliced in pie shapes for a more rustic and thicker shortbread.
You can use this recipe to decorate the shortbread, as well as reheat the coffee-flavored white chocolate I made to spread over some of the cookies:
http://www.food52.com/recipes...
From scanning through the photos, you can see what fun I had on this dreary and chilly day. —Bevi
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Prep time
30 minutes
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Cook time
15 minutes
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Makes
30 to 40 cookies and wedges of shortbread
Ingredients
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1 cup
butter, softened
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1/2 cup
packed brown sugar
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1/4 cup
granulated sugar
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2 tablespoons
Fresh coarsely ground coffee
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2 cups
AP flour
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1/4 teaspoon
salt
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4 ounces
Premium semi-sweet bakers' chocolate
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2 tablespoons
Strong, hot coffee
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1/2 cup
toasted coconut, sweetened or unsweetened
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1/4 cup
fresh coarsely ground coffee
Directions
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Preheat oven to 300 degrees. In a mixer, cream the butter with the sugars and 2 TBLS. of the ground coffee. Mix at least 5 minutes. Scrape down the mixture from the sides of the mixing bowl.
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Mix together the flour and salt, and add to the creamed butter and sugars in 4 parts. Scrape the bowl each time before you add more flour.
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Gather up the dough and pat into a disk. Place on a floured surface, flour your rolling pin, and roll out dough to no less than 1/4" thick. Use a 2-inch round cookie cutter and with a thin spatula place the cookie rounds on an ungreased flat baking sheet.
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Gather the dough, roll out again, and repeat Step 3.
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Gather the dough again, and roll out the dough in a rough circle to 1/2-inch thickness. This time, treat as a pie, and cut slices with roughened edges that will naturally occur.
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Place cookie sheets in the oven. The round cookies will be ready in approx. 15 to 17 minutes. The rustic pie-shaped shortbreads might take 17 to 20 minutes. Take cookies out of oven and immediately work on melting the chocolate.
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Using Amanda and Merrill's method to melt the chocolate, microwave the semi-sweet chocolate and immediately stir in the hot coffee. Stir until the chocolate becomes ganache-like in consistency.
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Now the fun part begins. Using an icing spatula, spread some of the ganache on the cookies. Then sprinkle the cookies with toasted coconut, or ground coffee, or both.
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Note: You can use the white chocolate covered Marcona Almonds from a previous recipe I submitted for this contest to decorate, as well as any reheated leftover coffee-flavored melted white chocolate.
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