White-Chocolate Cherry Shortbread

White-Chocolate Cherry Shortbread

1/2 cup maraschino cherries, drained and finely chopped
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup cold butter
12 oz white chocolate baking squares (with cocoa butter), finely chopped
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 drops red food coloring (optional)
Sugar
2 tsp shortening
White nonpareils and/or red edible glitter (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 325º. Spread cherries on paper towels to drain well.
2. In a large mixing bowl stir together flour and sugar. Using a pastry blender, cut in the butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in drained cherries and 4 oz (2/3 cup)of the chopped white chocolate. Stir in almond extract and, if desired, red food coloring. Form mixture into a ball and gently knead until smooth.
3. Shape dough into 3/4-inch balls. Place balls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Using the bottom of a drinking glass dipped in sugar, flatten balls to 1 1/2-inch rounds. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until centers are set. Let stand for 1 minute on cookie sheet. Transfer cookies to a wire rack and let cool.
4. In a small saucepan heat and stir remaining 8 oz white chocolate and the shortening over low heat until smooth. Dip half of each cookie into chocolate mixture, allowing excess to drip off. If desired, roll dipped edge in nonpareils and/or edible glitter. Place cookies on waxed paper. Let stand until set.

Makes 60 cookies.

The ingredients:



The cherries all chopped up and drying ... they're so pretty.

I still don't have a pastry blender so I had to cut in the butter by hand. It took a good 10 minutes or so to get it to the right consistency but I got it done. Perserverence. On that note, if anyone is looking for a Christmas or birthday gift idea ...

Mmm ... white chocolate.

Here is the dough with the cherries and chocolate ready to be mixed in. It says to add the food coloring now; I would wait a bit.

I added significantly more than the 2 drops of food coloring suggested in the recipe. I added the 2 drops before I even started kneading the dough and they pretty much disappeared. I kept adding more intermitently but really didn't see much of a change until most of the flour was worked into a dough (which takes quite a while). At that point, it took some kneading to get the color worked through evenly but it definitely showed up when added.

In hopes of getting evenly sized cookies, I rolled out all my ball o' cookies at once.

After the dough was portioned and balled, I simply put them on the cookie sheet and mashed them down with a sugared bottom of a juice glass. That was kind of enjoyable and fairly stress relieving. If you've got some pent up aggression or maybe just some old-fashioned angst, mash some pretty cookies with a glass. Afterward you'll be stress-free and you'll have cookies to boot.

Here is a baked cookie. It's not bad looking by itself but will be so much more fun after the next couple of steps.

Here is the rest of the white chocolate and the shortening before it's melted. It takes several minutes to melt (but would probably take less if you cut the chocolate up into finer pieces).

Dip. I would dip and then gently shake a little to get the excess to drip off. That seemed to work pretty well. I also tried dip and then wiping a bit of the excess off against the spoon handle; that technique takes a bit more finesse and doesn't really save you that much white chocolate so I switched back to my original plan by the end.

Roll. After dipping in the white chocolate, I rolled the edge in colored sugar. I didn't have as much of the red sugar as I wanted so I mixed it with a little regular sugar to make it more of a pinkish hue overall. The recipe also suggests some edible glitter or nonpareils but I couldn't find those on my regular grocery visit. Both versions are very pretty though, so if I plan ahead a little better before making these again I will try one of those.

Here are my cookies all lined up and cooling/drying. Make sure the chocolate is completely set before moving these off the waxed paper. I move one a little early and had a lot of difficulty getting it to ever set up well (it looked a little funky after that too).

The finished product: these are so pretty and yummy as well. I'm not a big fan of cherries in just about anything but the cherry flavor in this is subtle and pleasing. The white chocolate chunks and coating is smooth and delightful. These would be perfect for Valentine's Day or Christmas. You could even switch to green sugar for a classic "Christmasy" look.