Twice Baked Shortbreads and Zucchini, Cranberry, Chocolate Chip Cookies.

This week, I decided I'd take a quick foray back into baking after taking the last three weeks off. Thank you again to all of you who helped me do that.

I love shortbread. That could be the Scottish part of me or the fact that my Grandma used to make amazing shortbread for me when I was a kid, but I love it. I saw Smitten Kitchen's recipe for twice baked shortbread and I was intrigued. It looked like a standard shortbread recipe but the additional baking time should make it crispier. The recipe was really really easy. The hardest part was keeping the melting butter from overflowing the bowl in the microwave. Seriously, the active time making the batter was about 20 mins and then I let it sit for 3-4 hours to set. So easy! Go here for the shortbread recipe. J had never had shortbread before (besides Girl Scout cookies) and he liked them!


I also have to take this moment to do a little plug for my new tart pan from William Sonoma. For those of you thinking that WS only has expensive things, let me tell you, this amazing tart pan was only $9!!! If you'd like to get your own, check it out here. While I'm on the topic of awesome cooking gadgets, I'd like to take a second to discuss another recent purchase of mine - the 3 tier cookie rack. I don't have a ton of counter space in my apartment and tend to make a lot of cookies at a time. This was the perfect solution for me and I love it.


I always feel that I need to have more than one cookie if I'm serving cookies for dessert night so I looked for a very different type of cookie for my second cookie. Zucchini, Cranberry, Walnut and White Chocolate chip seemed as different as possible from shortbreads and also sounded tasty, so I went with that. However, I modified the recipe slightly based on the ingredients that I had around and had forgotten at the grocery store (oops!). So my cookies turned into just Zucchini, Cranberry and Chocolate Chip cookies. I left the shreaded coconut and walnuts out of the recipe and substituted regular chocolate chips for the white chocolate chips. I think as a result, the cookies were not as sweet as they would have been. They were definitely tasty. It was nice to have a softer cookie for a change too. Looking to make your own Zucchini, Cranberry, Chocolate Chip Cookies? Check out the recipe here.


All in all, it was a very tasty dessert night. Stay tuned for tiramissu next week in celebration of what would have been my Grandma's birthday!