Polenta Shortbread

Next up on Santa's cookie list are these amazing shortbread cookies. These are about as traditional as they come. They are Benno's, Mario's son's, favorite cookie. And so far my family's favorite as well. 

Again, as I had mentioned in the last post, I will spare the long babble and rants for these next few recipes and get right into the cooking. There are only three more cookies left to make, so I'm eager to knock this one out of the park. 

I start with mixing the dry ingredients; flour, quick-cooking polenta, sugar, baking powder, and salt. 

To this I add an egg, egg yolk, melted butter, and orange zest with the paddle attachment and mix for about three minutes until I form a sticky dough. Well, after five minutes I ended up with this dry heap:

Damn you Mario another typo?! This doesn't even resemble cookie dough!

Not wanting to add another recipe to the bonk list, I added a couple of tablespoons of melted butter to the dough to add some moisture. 

Still too dry.

I add a few more tablespoons of melted butter while mixing and finally we have a cohesive dough! I'm praying at this point that the recipe isn't shit from my adjustments. In all, I've added almost double the about of butter to make this come together. 

I wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge to chill for half an hour. 

Once chilled, I flour my workbench lightly and use a rolling pin to roll the dough out to a 1/4 inch thickness. So far so good, maybe my adjustments will work after all. (Although haven't I said that before too?)

Next, I take a square cookie cutter and cut out as many cookies as I can and put them on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. The dough scraps get re-rolled and cut again as many times as possible until all of the dough is used. 

The cookies get a sprinkling of sugar and bake at 325° until gold brown. 

My wife loved these cookies. We brought some over to our family to help us eat them and they seemed to like them too. They're crisp with just the right hint of orange. Turns out my tinkering worked out okay in the end. I will make these for many years to come. If you cut these cookies a little larger, they would be perfect for ice-cream sandwiches as Mario suggests. 

Only two more batches of cookies to go! Until next time...