Chocolate Dipped Salty Shortbread
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Irresistible Chocolate Dipped Salty Shortbread Cookies, perfect for holidays and parties!
It’s the week before Valentine’s Day… In my family this is a full-on week of baking.
Since our primary love language is food, we make all kinds of little goodies to give out to friends and take to school Valentine’s parties.
Can you guess what our star ingredient will be?
It’s indisputably chocolate.
You simply can’t have Valentine’s Day without chocolate, or at least I can’t!
My favorite treats to bake are cookies, i.e. perfectly portioned little love offerings.
In my opinion, there is one cookie variety that tops them all. Shortbread.
Buttery shortbread cookies are rich and light, flaky and dense. Yin and yang in dessert form.
A tasty contradiction.
I make many varieties of shortbread: cranberry orange, rosemary, lemongrass, shortbread thumb prints, cinnamon shortbread sandwich cookies…
Yet for Valentine’s Day my favorite is Chocolate Dipped Salty Shortbread.
I think we can all agree, chocolate and salt belong together. In Valentine terms, they are “MTB,” Meant To Be.
Salt brings out the brightest flavor of everything it’s added to. So why would we leave it out of dessert?
These Chocolate Dipped Salty Shortbread Cookies are easy to make, yet hard to resist.
The dough can be made up to two weeks ahead and kept in the refrigerator, for rolling and baking at a moment’s notice. Then sprinkle with a little extra sea salt on top, and dip in chocolate!
I like my Chocolate Dipped Salty Shortbread with semisweet chocolate. However, you can dip these cookies in milk chocolate, dark chocolate, really any variety of chocolate you like best.
All I really need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt! – Lucy Van Pelt (from Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz)
These sweet and salty shortbread cookies are a guaranteed hit for any holiday. Swap your heart cookie cutter for other fun shapes and make them all year long.
Chocolate Dipped Salty Shortbread
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, softened + 1/2 tablespoon for chocolate
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt + extra for sprinkling
- 6 ounces good chocolate, any variety
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, and line several baking sheets with parchment paper. Using an electric mixer cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla together until light and fluffy, 3-5 minutes. Scrape the bowl and beat again for 30 seconds.
- Sift the flour and salt together into a separate bowl. Then turn the mixer on low, and add the flour mixture a little at a time, until the dough comes together. Dump the dough onto a large sheet on plastic wrap. Flatten into a disk and wrap well. Place the dough in the fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes.
- Roll the dough out on a very well floured surface. Roll until it is 1/3-inch thick. Using a floured cookie cutter, cut out cookies and place on the parchment paper lined cookie sheets two inches apart. Try to cut out as many as possible from the first sheet of dough. Each time you gather and re-roll the dough, the cookies will get a little tougher.
- Bake for 20 minutes, until barely golden. Remove from the oven and immediately sprinkle with sea salt. Allow the cookies to cool completely.
For the Chocolate:
- Set a glass bowl above a small sauce pot with about one inch of water to create a double-boiler. Heat the pot over medium heat. Place broken chocolate pieces and 1/2 tablespoon butter in the bowl. Stir as the chocolate melts.
- Remove the bowl from the pan. Dip each cookie half way in the chocolate. Use a spatula to scrape the excess chocolate off the back. Place the cookies back on the parchment paper or on a wire rack. Allow them to cool and harden. If you need the chocolate to set faster, place in the fridge for 15 minutes. Store in an air-tight container.
Nutrition
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what lovely little sweets!
Yum! Chocolate dipped anything is my weakness.
Oh my, these are beautiful.
These look so heart warming! A little salt on top sounds perfect – you make me want to go out and buy heart shaped cookie cutters today!