day 9: fruit and nut shortbread

Ally, here.

Like I said before, we're playing a bit of catch up here.

Day 9 of the ultimately awesome cookie baking extravaganza delivered a recipe for fruit and nut shortbread cookies. I will be completely honest with you here and tell you that I had no desire to blog about these cookies. I don't like shortbread. I don't really enjoy dried fruit and chocolate. But, we promised to bake these cookies, so that's what I did. And I'm here to deliver the bad news that they weren't very good. But I'm also here to deliver my ideas for making them delicious.


Melissa d'Arabian's Fruit and Nut Holiday Shortbread

-1 stick butter, at room temperature
-1/3 cup sugar
-1 cup flour
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-1/4 cup chopped pecans
-1/4 cup dried cranberries
-2 tablespoons mini chocolate chips
-2 tablespoons orange marmalade

Now, if you're like me, you probably read that last ingredient and immediately started singing "Lady Marmalade" in your head. You should know that marmalade is basically a jam, not just a Christina Aguilera song. Although I remember jamming out to that song a time or two.

Anyway, back to the directions.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Cream the butter and the sugar in a bowl with an electric mixer.

In a small bowl, mix the flour and salt. Add to the butter and sugar mixture, a little at a time, until just uniform. Gather the dough into a ball and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Roll the dough out to about a 1/2-inch thickness and cut into squares or rectangles. Place on an ungreased baking sheet and bake 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine the pecans, dried cranberries, chocolate chips, and orange marmalade.

Remove the cookies from the oven and top with the marmalade mixture. Bake for 7 or 8 more minutes.

Maybe you are one of those people who genuinely enjoys shortbread cookies and the dried fruit and chocolate combination. If so, more power to you. You should try these.

If you are more like me, forget about the marmalade mixture and try drizzling these with chocolate. And maybe sprinkle some peanuts on top of that. The shortbread cookies themselves weren't bad, but the topping just wasn't for me. Let me know if you try anything different!

You're going to love it!