Chestnut Shortbread

Inspired by the Japanese love for chestnut, I am proud to present our chestnut shortbread cookies. There is nothing wrong having one of those in an overall healthy and balanced diet. They are crumbly, buttery and delicious. They make you happy. Probably, one of my favorite cookies of all time.

Shortbread is for me the king of cookies and incredibly easy to bake. They do not have crazy ingredient requirements with the only exotic one being the chestnut flour here. With gluten free becoming popular, you can now easily find it at health stores. And you are a bit on the crazy side you could make it by pouring boiled chestnuts and drying them at low temperature in an oven. Enough said here is the recipe:

Ingredients

Recipe

Preheat the oven to 200 °C. Mix all the ingredients quickly either using a food processor or by hand until you have a dough.

Roll out the dough between two pieces of parchment paper until it is approximately 5mm thick. Cut out squares with a knife and place them on a baking tray. 

Sprinkle some sugar on the cookies and bake them in the oven until golden: it will take between 20 and 30 minutes depending on your oven. Take them out and let them cool. While cooling, separate them gently with a knife if necessary. Resist the urge to eat them immediately: they are best after a couple of days!

Bonus

Wondering what the green beauties on the picture are? It’s matcha shortbread: use 200 g of all-purpose flour and no chestnut flour, add at least 15g of good quality cooking matcha. That’s quite a lot, but I think if they are called matcha shortbread, they really have to taste of matcha. So don’t skimp on it! Proceed as above. Decorate with some molten white chocolate if you like.

There is just one rule for shortbread: use proper butter! Don’t dare to use margarine here. Feel free to create your own shortbread: cardamon and coffee, orange and cumin, rose and pistachio… and share your own shortbread baking experience with us in the comments. And if you are to lazy to bake, share the article and hope someone will bake them for you 😉 .