Easy Vanilla Bean Shortbread Cookies

Saturday, December 21, 2013

What's needed:
2 C flour
1/2 tsp salt
8oz butter at room temperature ( I used natural Irish butter from Costco)
1/2 C powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 to 1 whole vanilla bean, halved length wise and seeds scraped out into bowl

What to do:
- In a stand mixer, cream together butter and powdered sugar. This make take the mixer a couple minutes. Mix until mixture is light and fluffy.
- Scrap down sides of mixing bowl and mix one more time.
- Mix in vanilla and vanilla beans. Scrap down sides again.
- Sift in dry mixture, flour and salt, into creamed butter mixture. Make sure not to over mix! Mix until sifted flour is just incorporated.
- Turn dough out onto parchment or wax paper in a ball and pat down.

- Cover with wax paper and roll out into a square or whatever shape you like to cut out your cookies, until dough is 1/4" in thickness. This eliminates having to use flour.
- I rolled mine into a square to cut straight squares out as I found on the recipe from sweetlavnerbakeshoppe.com
- Carefully place large flat rolled out disk on cutting board and place in fridge for atleast 10-20 minutes.
-  Remove wax paper on top and cut cookies with out cutting the parchment below.
- Line your baking sheet with parchment paper and preheat oven to 325*F.
- Place cookies on lined baking sheet about a 1/2 inch apart, they do not spread. If wanting to add decorations do that now and press in to cookies a little.
- Place back in fridge to firm up another 5-10 minutes. You can re roll out the scraps to make more cookies, but you may want to put the extra dough back in the fridge again after rolling out, it will be pretty soft at this point.
- Bake 12-17 minutes, check on them at 10 minutes since everyones oven is different. They are done when firm and golden blonde color. Then let cool on wire rack and enjoy!

My mom loved them with a cup of coffee!

Recipe completely adapted from sweelavenerbakeshoppe.com