Vanilla Bean Shortbread

A little while ago I was searching for the perfect meringue recipe and I stumbled on Cupcake Jemma’s youtube channel, and after a few videos was hooked. Her videos are pretty short, and show you how to do some pretty cool things, like make a polka-dotted swiss roll. Pretty shnazzy.

Anyways, I was looking for a new shortbread recipe and I found hers as part of a donut cookie sandwich. So I used that and added a little a little bit of my own spin on it by adding the seeds of two vanilla beans.

Tower of cookies!

Vanilla beans in stores can cost a pretty penny, but if you buy them online from Amazon, you can get a pretty sweet deal, and they are versatile! You can make your own vanilla extract, vanilla sugar, vanilla sugar scrub, or just use the beans in desserts. A solid investment.

Anyways, who doesn’t love shortbread? Easy to make, easy to eat. A little too easy. Which is why I gave these away after having about five of the little squares.

Tower

Plate

Hand to noms

Check it out and if you haven’t watched Cupcake Jemma’s channel, check that out too!

Vanilla Bean Shortbread

Time: Prep 25 min, Bake = 25 min
Difficulty: easy
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300g plain flour (around 2.5 cups)
100g caster sugar (around 0.5 cups)
Pinch of salt
250g unsalted butter, cold and chopped into cubes (around 2 sticks)
2 vanilla beans, scraped, seeds saved.
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 300F and prep a baking sheet with a silpat or baking sheet.

In a food processor, process the flour, sugar, salt, butter, vanilla beans, and vanilla extract together until it just comes together in a ball. That’ll take a little under 1 minute. Then dump it out onto a floured surface and knead it 5-7 times (not too much or else you’ll build up the gluten protein and make it less crumbly) until it all comes together. Then roll it out to about 2 cm thick (or about the thickness of your finger) and cut out whatever shapes you want, I prefer squares. Put them on a baking sheet and pop them in the freezer for 10 minutes, and pull them out and put them in the oven for 25 minutes. Allow them to cool and eat with tea, by themselves, or with ice cream.