Chocolate Dipped Shortbread Cookies

Generally if you want to make a super quick and easy cookie, your go-to is shortbread. There are three ingredients, and they can be made into rounds, stips, cut-outs, anything really. Don't be decived by this, they are a pain. To begin you mix the flour and sugar, praying it doesn't fly out of the bowl. Then add the stick of butter. Easy right? Not really, for this to work you must make sure the butter is softened but not runny. If it is too soft the dough won't stick, if it is too cold the dough will crumble. One of the most important steps that I neglected (by acident!) was "Cut[ing] in the butter till mixture resembles fine crumbs and starts to cling" (120). I found out soon enough that this was one of the msot important steps. If you just put the butter straight into the bowl it does not cling to all of the mixture resulting in your dough not clumping together.

This only becomes a major problem if you want to make the cookies into shapes,  this was my orginal plan but because I missed a step I resulted to using a greased pan. After kneading the dough for about 10 minutes I firmly pressed the dough into a pan and poped it into the oven.

Shortbread cookies plain, are well, plain. So I decided to make them dipped in chocolate. To do this I made fudge but didn't allow it to heat all the way. This keeps the fugde from hardening so it makes a perfect dip. The leftover chocolate can later be used for chocolate over icecream, simply heat it in a microwave for 30-40 seconds.

After dipping the shortbreads in chocolate and letting them chill overnight they were ready to eat and quite delicious!

Recipie:
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup butter

Better Homes and Gardens: New Cook Book. Des Moines: Merdith, 1989. Print.