Happy 2009

oh. I forgot the words. Like it matters. Anyway - cookies for YOU Julie! Sure I might have missed Snackfest '09 (think it's a bit premature to be making declarations like that? I mean there's a whole lot of year left with surely much potential for equaling if not surpassing the excellence that was the aforementioned Snackfest? And then what? SnackSlapdown? I guess that could work) but I was there in spirit. And I was carrying cookies. Shortbread cookies, with chocolate! And you would have loved them. I'm sure of it.

Shortbread Cookies - makes 48 if you use your little scooper

1 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt (or not if you use salted butter)
2 cups flour

Cream the butter, sugar and salt together in a bowl, then mix in 2 cups of flour about 1/4 a cup at a time. It'll eventually make a big lump of stiff dough that will walk a Kitchen-aid right off the counter if you aren't careful. Anyway. I digress. Again. Roll out the dough and cut it however you want. Apparently when I was a child I called rolling pins ro-doughlers. Apparently it was cute.
I roll dough on a flexible cutting mat - no flour needed. Or you can scoop it into balls and squash them with the bottom of a whiskey bottle. Or you know, a glass. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven until as brown as you like 'em. Probably somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes. It really depends on how thin you rolled or smashed the dough.
I had lots of extra chocolate around so I made dents in the centers of these with my thumb and put a little chunk of dark chocolate love on each and every one. Then I stuck the whole pan back in the oven to get melty.


Maybe someday I'll explain how I came to possess extraneous amounts of dark chocolate, but for now I'll end with the first of this year's Resolutions.

Try to incorporate dark chocolate into more recipes.

Happy New Year ya'll!