Crackly Coffee Shortbread

My drip coffee ritual is now a common occurrence during the work week, thanks to a generous coworkers gifting of an electric burr grinder to the kitchen area. This also means that a dwindling bag of beans, not quite sufficient to brew a cup, has become something of an issue. I think I've got a solution to that, though. Adding to my long list of shortbread recipes is this one, a pleasantly crunchy, caffeine-spiked addition to any breakfast, snack, or tea time. The amount of beans I used was essentially a random guess that turned out to work quite well; the vanilla amount less so. The butter, sugar, vanilla, and coffee stage of the recipe smelled like heaven, but adding the flour muted the vanilla and baking it seems to have eradicated it completely. I'd recommend playing around with the vanilla amounts to try and preserve that flavor.

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Crackly Coffee Shortbread

Makes ~12 cookies

1 cup flour

1 stick unsalted butter (1/2 cup)

1/4 cup powdered sugar

1 tbsp roasted whole coffee beans, plus extra for garnish

1/2 tsp vanilla

Cream the butter and sugar together in a mixing bowl. If you don't cream them and instead just mix them, you will get a denser cookie. With a mortar and pestle, grind down the coffee beans to a size bigger than granulated sugar (if you like crunch) or finer (if you don't). Incorporate the coffee and vanilla into the mixing bowl. Add flour and mix until the dough goes back to being a dough, not a bunch of clumps of butter and flour. You may need to "knead" the dough a little by hand if mixing via spoon.

Take a portion of dough about the size of my thumb, or about 1/12th of the dough, and roll into a ball. Flatten between palms of hands and place on a baking sheet. Garnish each cookie with a bean or two (optional) and maybe a fancy design (also optional). Turn oven to 350 and while that is heating, place the cookies in the fridge (not optional in the slightest). After no less than 10 minutes in the fridge, and if the oven is heated, bake for 22 minutes or until the edges have taken a very light browning.

Shortbread + Irish Cream

It has been quite some time since the last round of shortbread, but they are not forgotten. To the contrary, I made biscotti regina a bit ago from this recipe, but didn't honor it with a post. I would recommend adding some anise (or anise-like flavor, like absinthe) to that recipe and otherwise no changes. But! Shortbread! With Irish Cream! The goal of this experiment was to make the shortbread still look like shortbread, but have a creamy boozy flavor to them. It almost worked; the final texture is very nice and they taste good, but the cream doesn't really come through. More booze, maybe? I used 2 tbsp Irish Cream and 1 tbsp olive oil; I've changed that (without trying it) to 3tbsp Irish Cream and no olive oil in the recipe below. Otherwise: A++ would bake again.

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Irish Cream Shortbread

Makes 1 dozen cookies

1/2 cup pastry flour

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 stick unsalted butter (1/2 cup)

1/4 cup powdered sugar

3 tbsp Irish Cream

large crystal sugar for garnish

Cream the butter; if using a blender this is easy. If using your muscles, I like chopping it finely and then stirring with a fork. It may not cream; no worries, the Irish Cream will save you. Once the butter is creamed, add in the sugar and cream again. Add in the flour and mix until it begins clumping; it may not form a ball; that is fine Irish Cream will save this as well. Add in the Irish Cream 1 tbsp at a time; the dough should now definitely form a ball. Using your hands, divide the dough into about 12 pieces and shape each like your thumb (by rolling it into a ball, then rolling the ball between your hands to elongate it). Put the shaped cookies on a baking sheet, sprinkle the sugar over the tops and lightly press it in, then refrigerate for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 and cook for 25-30 minutes, until they have browned slightly around the bottom. Rotate the pan at some point if you want to be anal about these things or your oven has a vendetta against even baking.

You must must must let them cool; unlike cookies, shortbread fresh from the oven is not good as it will still be soft.

Stubborn Biscuits

A somewhat frequent morning tradition of mine is to stop by one of the many Blue Bottle locations on my morning commute (Original or Mint Plaza if by bike, Ferry Plaza if by MUNI/foot) and get two things: a soy mocha and a biscotti regina. There is a proper order to this: wait for the drink. Bite the biscotti; chew and swallow. Talk a small sip of the mocha. Repeat until biscotti is gone. The combination of the sesame and slight anise in the biscotti pairs with the bittersweet mocha. So I want to re-create that. Except I'm a stubborn one, and I refuse to look up a recipe for bisoctti regina because it looks and tastes very much like a shortbread. So I experiment.

Looking at the picture, and having eaten on of these biscottis yourself, you may think: success! That is, until you bite it and are greeted with... a thick shortbread. Very much a dessert, not an almost-savory pairing for a liquid one.

My thinking was this: take a shortbread. Add baking powder to give it some fluff. Add some olive oil to give it some air. Coat it in milk to both soften it when it cooks and to also get the seeds to stick. Lessen the amount of sugar to cut the sweetness. So I did all of these things, but it was not enough. The inside is still far too dense, and I refuse to increase the batch size so I can include egg. I will find another way. Next up: adding a little more liquid to the dough itself (milk or water or more olive oil, I don't know) and playing with the butter : flour ratio. Recipe follows, if you want it for reference.

Chocolate Marble Shortbread

After the truffle failure, I find myself with a bag full of pure cocoa powder and a deep desire to use it. Should I put it on bread? Try making truffles again? Snort it direct from the source? While I try and find a dinner recipe to use it (cocoa rubbed pork tofu?), I might as well work it into my shortbread experiments. Except, thinking myself skilled at the shortbread, I made a larger-than-experiment batch.

There really is something grand about making shortbread; the many little things to tweak in the recipe, the simplicity of the ingredients, how awesome creamed butter is, and the smell it produces when baking. To keep this an experiment, even though the batch size was large, I only added two ingredients. Wait, that isn't an ingredient - aren't you only supposed to have one variable? Well, I added the aforementioned cocoa powder and a pinch of vanilla extract. You know, to get a chocolate and vanilla combo going on.

The only thing I would change in the process is my marbling/striping procedure. I had split each half (chocolate and plain) into 10 pieces and rolled each. I then alternated them on the work surface and rolled it together; despite this, they still mostly broke apart on the lines between dough types. Rolling both sides and not just the top may have helped; alternatively, I could have simply take the pieces, mashed them together, and rolled that out.

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Chocolate Marble Shortbread

Makes ~15 bites, 30 minute prep (including freeze time), 20 minute bake

1/2 cup (8 tbsp) flour

1/4 cup (4 tbsp) butter

1/8 cup (2 tbsp) powdered sugar

1 tsp cocoa powder

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

In a mixing bowl, cream the butter (stir it vigorously until it gets creamy). Add in the sugar, and cream again. Mix in the flour and stir until you are left with a bunch of clumps of flour. Add in the vanilla and stir again - it should now form a ball with the extra moisture. Separate the dough into two equal piles and add the cocoa powder to one. Mix with a spoon a bit, and then finish working the powder in evenly by hand.

Marble the dough as described above and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Place, covered, in freezer and preheat oven to 350 degrees. After about 15 minutes in the freezer, remove the dough and indent it with a butter knife along the lines you want it to break. Place it in the oven for ~20 minutes, or a little longer if you want them extra crispy. Let it cool for at least 30 minutes, preferably overnight.

Strawberry Shortbreads

On a recent trip to the grocery store to stock up on necessities, I was surprised to find fresh, California strawberries staring back at me from the organic shelf. I grabbed a box and ran home to devour them; a few strawberries in I realized this wasn't the best idea. Its not that they weren't ripe nor delicious (they were both), but rather that I should savor them. So I stopped my feast, hands painted in red, and went about mixing some bread.

But I still wanted strawberries, and I have poor self control when it comes to these things, so I compromised. One strawberry for a shortbread experiment, and no more until tomorrow. If you remember last time I attempted to make savory ones with baking powder. It worked, but not spectacularly - it was far too dry and didn't plump as much as expected. I know that many moist breads get that way by using butter, buttermilk, or oil. Butter was out because, well, I think these things have enough butter already. Buttermilk was out because I would only be using a teaspoon or less. So, olive oil it is.

The baking powder ration for the bread also seemed wrong the last time: 1 tsp for 8 tbsp of flour was definitely not right. The smallest measuring spoon I have is 1/4 tsp, so that decided it for me: the perfect ratio of baking powder to flour is going to be 1/4 tsp to 2 tbsp, damn the consequences. Turns out it may have been a bit much; I think 1/4 tsp to 4 tbsp might be a more accurate measure. When I put this on the cookie sheet, it was round and about the diameter of my thumb; you can see in the photo how far it spread out and how much it rose. Rolling tighter may be in order next time, to get the shape to keep.

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2 tbsp flour

1 tbsp butter

1/2 tbsp powdered sugar (probably could reduce this to 1 tsp and not notice)

1 strawberry, cut into strips, mostly eaten after you realize you only need 5 pieces.

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp olive oil

In very small container (think an espresso cup, or maybe a little larger), whip butter until it gets airy and creamy. Add sugar and blend until mixed. Add flour and baking powder, again stirring until mixed (it should form a crumbly mix). Add olive oil and mix until it forms into a ball. Shape into a log and, with the back of a knife, press gently into the dough at an angle and wiggle the knife to create a depression large enough to fit a strawberry chunk. Place strawberry chunk in said depression.

Place dough in fridge for 20+ minutes, until it hardens. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and cook shortbread for 20 minutes. Let cool for at least 30 minutes, preferably an hour. They are much better room temperature after the butter has solidified than fresh out of the oven when it is gooey.

Sovrano Grana and Mushroom Shortbread

Mushrooms are a funny food to me. I think I hate them, on the whole, but I find it hard to not try using them every few weeks. I don't quite learn my lesson, or I see a recipe that looks good, or I think "maybe this time they will taste good". I'm not quite fooling myself, either, because I have enjoyed mushrooms and I even know a kind I can reliably enjoy. But I still branch out from there. So, crazy idea, why not stick some dried mushrooms and some strong cheese on shortbread? Don't mind if I do.

I found myself going to the mushroom shop in the ferry terminal surrounded by things that sounded delicious. Candy mushrooms? Sweet mushrooms? Almond mushrooms? How could any of these things be bad? So I picked up some almond mushrooms and took them home. I opened the bag and almost immediately gagged. These things are strong and pungent. They taste nothing like almond and mostly like ass. I persevered, hoping for the best. The amount you see below is how much I thought I would use, but the smell and taste convinced me to only use half as much (for nine shortbreads about the size of two thumbs put side-by-side). Any hint of mushroom flavor baked out in the oven, so I was left with only their texture. Maybe more next time, or maybe just not mushrooms.

I made a slight change to the recipe I've used in the past, adding a tiny bit of baking powder to get more rise out of the shortbreads, figuring it more fitting for a savory dish. The cooking time/process, however, got miffed a little - they cooked a bit too long and got very crispy internally. You can see the browned bottoms below. The amount of baking powder was a complete guess - 1 teaspoon seemed good, as 1 tablespoon was obviously too much.

Sovrana Grana and Mushroom Shortbreads (makes 9 biscuits/half a cookie sheet)

• 8 tbsp (1/2 c) flour
• 4 tbsp (1/4 c) butter
• 2 tbsp powdered sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• few pinches of grated Sovrana Grana (feel free to use any salty, hard cheese)
• (optional) few dried almond mushrooms, chopped to bits. Use at least twice what you see in my photos

In mixing bowl, "whip" butter. If it is fresh from the fridge, just stir it with a wooden spoon in a small bowl until it gets creamy. Add sugar, blend, add flour and baking powder, blend again. On cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, form biscuits by pinching off a bit of dough. Roll dough between palms quickly to get a sphere, then rock side-to-side while pressing to make a nice biscuit shape. The quicker the better, so the butter doesn't melt.

Put a some of the mushrooms into each biscuit by pressing them in, then plop grated cheese on top of each biscuit, also pressing it in lightly. Place, covered, in fridge for at least 30 minutes. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees; cook biscuits for 10 minutes, rotate, and cook for 5-10 minutes more (depending on desired crisp).

I'll do an experiment later with baking powder to get a better feel for how to make lighter, more savory shortbreads.

Shortbread, Now Entering Beta Phase

Knowing I had an evening of nerds planned for tonight and only a few hours last night to whip something up, I went with shortbread. The host of the evening is a ginger fanatic, to say the least, so the natural topping seemed to be ginger. Got home too late to go shopping, but I had candied ginger lying around. Doesn't quite match the triple threat of his candied/dried/fresh ginger cookies but it will do the trick.

What you see here are the finished bites - basic shortbread, topped with a small piece of candied ginger and a light sprinkle of crushed black pepper and sea salt. You can't quite make out the salt in this picture; a coarser grind would have been both more delicious and more visually appealing. The salt and pepper form an X, but these are meant to be eaten in one bite so the unequal covering won't matter. You can actually see it clearly in the pre-baked shot which is both better post-processed (thanks Picasa!) and a better angle.

I think my alpha batches have been serviceable, maybe even sometimes delicious, but this new beta phase is miles above the previous batches. It might be the flavoring. it might be the thin-ness, or it might even be the prep method. But because I wasn't experimenting I changed far too many factors to really know. Maybe it was just a combination of all of the things I've done before (350 degree oven, 20 minute cook time, no funny flours, very thin for ultimate crisp).

Ginger and Pepper Shortbreads (makes 15-ish bite-sized shortbreads, feel free to double/quadruple recipe for a "normal" batch)

• 8 tbsp (1/2 c) flour [unbleached all-purpose or pastry flour]
• 4 tbsp (1/4 c) butter, frozen
• 2 tbsp powdered sugar
• Candied ginger
• Coarse sea salt
• Fresh ground black pepper

Grate the butter into a mixing bowl (I'm trying this because it worked so well in the biscuits) and add in the sugar. Mix with a fork until it the sugar is incorporated. Add in flour and whisk to distribute the ingredients. Usually, the butter is beaten and everything incorporates easily. However, with frozen butter, that won't happen without either a liquid (currently banned from my shortbreads) or some pressure. So, after ingredients are evenly distributed, get in there with your hands and squeeze the dough until it all forms into a ball.

On a lightly-floured cutting board, roll out the dough into a rectangle or square. It should be very thin - slightly thinner than a #2 pencil. Use a metal spatula to square off the edges. Transfer dough to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and, with the spatula, cut most of the way through the dough to form a square grid - you can cut all the way through, but half is enough. It will break apart easily after cooking.

In each square, push a piece of candied ginger into the dough so that it forms an indentation. Hopefully this is enough to get it to set. Sprinkle a cross of black pepper from one corner to the other of each square, and a sprinkle of salt perpendicular to that. Turn on the oven to 350 degrees and place the cooking sheet in the fridge for 20-30 minutes.

Remove the chilled-again tray and place in oven for 10 minutes, rotate, and cook for 10 minutes more. Let cool. Eat one to make sure they are good, then break the grid apart completely so it isn't obvious you ate one before bringing it over to a friends place.

Shortbread Thickness

For today's shortbread experiment (well, Friday's but posted today), I played around with thickness/shape. Unfortunately, in doing so, I regressed w.r.t. the baking temperature. I mistakenly baked at 325 for 20 minutes, despite finding out in a previous experiment that 350 was optimal.

We have three sizes here: normal/normal, half/normal, and normal/half. The first part is how thick it is, the second part is how wide it is. You can see that the thinnest one is the most colored inside, but then you realize it is an optical illusion due to my phone camera taking a bad photo and my cleanup attempts failing. The half/normal came out the crumbliest, and the normal/half and normal/normal were indistinguishable. Remember, the goal for shortbread is to cook out most of the butter so it becomes crumbly instead of mushy. Here is my pinky for reference. And, yes, these things are small.

On the left we have pre cooking, and on the right post-cooking. They do plump a little in the oven, and lost a little bit of their shape. The important bit is letting them cool completely - they are actually best the next day (or, at least a few hours after baking) instead of fresh out of the oven like most cookies are. Yay for not during myself!

More Experiments

A followup on two previous experiments for today. The first, and most delicious, would be the bread (the first link, previously named "Cornmeal Raisin Rolls"). I think, after tweaking the recipe a bit, I've got a new name for it - Chewy-as-Hell Bread. Also delicious. Also containing raisins. I doubled the amount of cornmeal in the dough and slightly upped the raisins - this made it a tad firmer, and infinitely chewier, than the previous recipe. If you want to bake this at home, you can experiment with adding a very small amount of honey (like a teaspoon or two to give it more sweetness) and changing the amount of raisins (up or down, your call).

I just noticed - the scoring pattern kind of makes the loaf look like a pile of crap. Umm, I assure you, it tasted nothing of the sort. I tried two new things on this loaf, in addition to tweaking the recipe. First, I used a poor-mans couche/basket combo to try and shape the loaf better. As pictured below, I prepared a metal boal by putting some paper towel in it, spraying it with a bit of oil, and then dropping the dough in, seam-side up. If we go by finished product, I think it worked, but visually there was no indication of any differences, besides creating a pocketed pattern on the dough (seen below on the right).

The other major change in baking style was to improvise a dutch oven for the first half of baking. I baked in a cast-iron skillet, but put a spare 9x9 casserole dish I had over the top. I think this had an effect on the dough, but I didn't try an A/B test so I don't know for sure. It definitely had a very crispy crust around it, more than I usually get from a loaf.

Chewy-as-Hell Bread

• 310g unbleached bread flour
• 255g warm water
• 60g polenta-grind cornmeal (previously: 30g)
• 20g raisins (previously: 15g)
• 7g salt
• 4g instant yeast

The night before:

Combine yeast and warm water, making sure yeast is active (it should bubble a little, the yeast will mostly dissolve, and it will smell great). Combine all dry ingredients except raisins in a bowl, mix. Add the water and yeast, stirring for a minute with a wooden spoon until all the water is absorbed. Add the raisins, stirring for another minute. Let rest for 5, then stretch and fold four times with a ten minute rest between each. You must stretch and fold - you can see the before and after below. The dough goes from a gooey, sticky mess to an almost-manageable, still sticky ball.

The day of:
2 hours before baking, remove the dough and shape into a loaf on a lightly-floured work surface. Proof at room temperature, covered. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. 10 minutes before baking, remove the cover and coat an oven-safe pan (cast iron, no wooden handle) with cornmeal (normal cornmeal, not polenta-grind). Place the loaf in the pan. Right before placing it in the oven, score the dough. Put in oven, cover with another oven-safe metal thing, and reduce heat to 450 degrees. Let bake for 12 minutes, rotate the pan and remove the lid. Let bake for 12 more minutes, turn off the oven, and let the dough sit in the oven for 5 more minutes. Cool for an hour before cutting/serving.

Experiment Two, Shortbread (Longer Bake Time)
And an update on shortbread experimentation: I tried cooking for 20 minutes at 325, using the base "sweet" recipe. Much better - very flaky and hard, a tiny bit browned. I think 350 might be the optimal temperature for 20 minutes because the very center still had a bit of yellow, not white, dough.

Shortbread, Now With Buckwheat

For todays (well, not todays but you know what I mean) micro-recipe, I did a 50% sub of buckwheat flour for normal flour, and a baseline of 1/2 tbsp powdered sugar. So, roughly 1/2 tbsp powdered sugar, 1 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp flour, 1 tbsp buckwheat flour. The dough was a lot firmer and required far more stirring to get the ingredients to come together.

 Pre baked on the left, post baked (but pre cooled) on the right

The finished cookies also tasted like buckwheat, obviously. I'm not sure this was a good thing. Another thing I experimented with in this batch was cooling time - I split the single-serving into two biscuits. I at one after 30 minutes cooling time, and ate the second after about 2.5 hours of cooling time. The 2.5 hour cooling time was far superior, as after 30 minutes the biscuit still had quite a bit of heat and chewiness (not something one looks for in an ideal shortbread). The 2.5 hour one was not quite that perfect combination of flakiness and dryness I expect, but it was much closer. I think my baking time/temperature might need some adjustment.

Shortbread Micro-recipe, Take Two

A follow up to the last post is in order. I made the 1-2-4 shortbread (a single serving, in fact) last night. This one came out much better. Same process: chop butter and whip it with a fork, add sugar and whip again, add flour and stir. I shape the dough with my hands, then put it on parchment and slip it in the fridge for 30 minutes. This time I went with 325 degrees instead of 350, but the same cooking time (9-10 minutes). This is just about when the shortbread begins to glisten but not lose its shape.

Pre-baked is on left, post baked is on right. The dough was noticeably stiffer, but it still "melted" in the oven. I think this is going to be a normal part of this recipe, as I hesitate to add any more flour. After I let it cool for an hour, it had hardened into what I would consider normal shortbread consistency - flaky and very solid. It was also delicious. Up next: either adding another ingredient (vanilla? raisins?) or playing around with the flour (whole wheat, buckwheat, etc).

Remember, this was made with 1/2 tablespoon of sugar, 1 tablespoon of butter, and 2 tablespoons of flour. And it made exactly one shortbread. Working with an amount of ingredients this small is phenomenal - I take one of my tiny sake cups and a tiny fork and can whip the butter with minimal effort; it softens quite easily given how little there is.

Experimenting via Micro-Recipes

While eating a piece of shortbread, I thought to myself, "Mikey like! Mikey make?" except not necessarily in terms so simplistic. So, straight to the internet where I discovered many interesting facts about shortbread - its long and storied history, its place in cultures across the world, and its humble origins. Namely, 1 part sugar 2 parts butter 3 parts flour. If you check wikipedia, you'll note the flour bit says "oatmeal flour" but since when have I read things properly?

My plan, and I will continue with it, is to take advantage of the few ingredients and simple ratios of shortbread to experiment by making a very small  batch (a cookie or two) and tweaking things one at a time. I started off today with a baseline where I took a single tablespoon to be a part. Two biscuits where formed - a baseline sweet to be topped with powdered sugar, and a baseline savory to be topped with sea salt. Other than those toppings, applied after baking, there were no differences in the biscuits.

I made a guess on preparation and baking - refrigerate the dough to set it after shaping and an oven heated to 350 degrees, cooking time of 10 minutes. Now, that wrong type of flour mentioned above truly bit me on this night of baselining. See, oatmeal flour is a thicker, heartier type of flour than the unbleached all-purpose flour I employed. The beautiful 1-2-3 ratio did not produce much beyond slightly heated dough. Post-baking, the biscuits had notably melted and failed to solidify the least bit. Once cooled, they were semi-firm and questionably delicious - they reminded me of sugar cookie dough. I dutifully ate them, however, in the name of science.

 The next step, then, is to re-baseline the recipe using a 1-2-4 ratio. While not as mnemonic as 1-2-3, it pleases me that it forms a list of powers of two. From there, assuming I get good results, I will experiment with toppings, fillings, and dough ingredients - and I will reduce down to a half tablespoon as the "part", which will make a single biscuit. Hopefully I get good results out of this experiment, though eating a spoonful of flour butter sugar isn't the worst thing a man can do.