Balsamic Swirled Shortbread

Shortbread is considered lucky. I have no idea why, and can't find out in a casual internet search. It has been a staple of my childhood new years eve's. If you know why it's lucky, please comment and let me know. It's baffling.

Maybe because it's golden and coin shaped?

I have made olive oil shortbreads before. They were spectacular. But I can't make them the same way twice! So this time I started with a standard shortbread and swirled some fun inside.

So what is your New Year's lucky tradition?

Balsamic Swirled Shortbread

1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups flour
2 tbsp Tangerine Balsamic

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl. Add the flour in gradually and mix until the dough sticks together nicely.

Make a well in the center of the dough and sprinkle the balsamic in. Stir around, but not too well.

Break off pieces in tablespoon sized chunks and flatten into discs.

Bake for 11-13 minutes.

Lemon Shortbread

Shortbread has got to be one of the easiest cookies to put together. A lot of recipes call for lots of ingredients, baking sodas, salt, extracts of every kind.... All that is just filler. Good shortbread is just flour, sugar and butter.

Or in this case, olive oil and butter.

Lemon Shortbread

1/2 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1/2 cup Meyer Lemon Olive Oil
1/2 cup butter, softened

Preheat your oven to 300degrees.

Cream the oil, butter and sugar together until well blended. Mix in the flour until combined.

This dough works best when rolled out into a sheet and cut into bars. You can cut it before or after. Before baking, poke the cookies with a fork all over.

Bake for 35-40 minutes.

This should make around 3 dozen small cookies.

There cookies are delicate and buttery without being overly sweet. If you use more olive oil and less butter, these become very crumbly, so I do suggest doing this half with butter and half with olive oil. This works well with any of the fruit flavored olive oils. You can also add in a tablespoon of cocoa powder. But if you do, you need an extra tablespoon of oil too.

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