#15. Chocolate Shortbread

This recipe comes from Joy of Cooking, which made it sound like a family recipe of the editors', but no one in particular came up when I Googled the name Mildred Kroll. Whoever she was, she "used to make this... as a snack for her kids when they went off to college." It's very good with coffee--not so much with tea or plain.

Part of the fault could be mine--I used highest-quality sugar, chocolate, and butter, but went with Gold Medal white whole wheat flour instead of the fancier brand I ordinarily use (I didn't want to drive very far that day). I made blueberry pancakes with the same Gold Medal flour, and my roommate pronounced them "very good!" (with a full mouth, no less), but I found them a bit grainy and dull-tasting, just like this shortbread.

I made a half-recipe. Here are the ingredients I used:

1 stick of butter (I used cultured butter)

1/4 C superfine sugar (I used powdered sugar instead--this could have messed things up)

1/8 tsp salt

You mix the above together, then add:

1.5 oz. melted chocolate

Then stir in:

1 C. flour

Then I pressed it into a pie dish and baked it at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. (This was probably too long, now that I think about it. Forty minutes may have been right for the 13" X 9" dish called for in the book's recipe, but not for this.)

Before it cools completely, you cut the shortbread into little bars:

I tried to dress them up with some daffodils. These are from my grandfather's daffodil bulbs that came all the way from Indiana. They used to grow outside my bedroom window when I was a child:

B, though this recipe might have turned out better had I baked the full amount. 

(I still ate all the shortbread within 24 hours. That means I consumed an entire stick of butter in 24 hours! I felt totally fine afterwards, but I should probably go on a juice fast or something anyway.)