Fantastic Bake Along – Shortbread Cookies

It’s that time of the month again! Fantastic Bake Along time! The Fantastic Bake Along is organized by Tracy at It’s a T-Sweets Day!, and is open for anyone to join. This month I was privileged to have been given the opportunity to choose the recipe for the Bake Along, and I chose a long time favourite recipe for shortbread cookies.

What I love about this recipe is that it’s super simple with only four ingredients. You can get fancy by rolling out the dough, cutting shapes, and decorating them, or you can go simple (like I did) and just roll the dough into small balls, press with a fork, and bake.

This recipe was originally from the Canada Cornstarch package, and although they no longer print it on the box (in fact their packaging has changed to a plastic container), I was able to find the original recipe on the manufacturer’s website, here.

My cousin recently gave me a package of culinary lavender buds, and I’ve been dying to try them out, so the last time I made these cookies (about a month ago) I ground a teaspoon of lavender with my mortar and pestle, and added it to my dry ingredients.

This time around I added the lavender, plus the zest of one lemon. I had my friend test them out, and we both agreed that maybe I could add a little more lemon zest next time around.

Grandma’s Shortbread with Lemon and Lavender
1/2 cup corn starch
1/2 cup icing sugar
1 cup flour
3/4 cup butter, softened
1 tsp culinary lavender, ground
zest from 1-2 lemons

Grind the lavender buds with a mortar and pestle until fairly fine, and zest the lemon(s).

Lavender before grinding

Lavender after grinding

Mix all of the dry ingredients together, including the lavender and lemon zest. Add the butter and mix well with a wooden spoon until the dough is smooth and soft. Shape into small balls and place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Flatten with a lightly floured fork and bake at 300°F for about 18 minutes. Place cookies on a rack to cool…just a tip for those with small kitchens. If you have a toaster oven, like I do, the rack is the perfect place to cool your cookies!

Once they’re cool, it’s time to enjoy these delicious morsels of goodness! They are the perfect accompaniment to a nice cup of tea!

Please don’t forget to check out all the other bakers at the links below, to see how their cookies turned out!

• Tracy at It’s a T-Sweets Day!
• Kathy at Sewing Etc.
• Teacher Turned Mommy
• Emma at Emma Crafts Design
• Brenna at Crochet539
• Tina at Kristabella’s Hodgepodge
• AJ at A Petite Slice of Life
• Lucia at Crochet, Knit, and More