Eggless Vanilla Shortbread Cookies

All good things come to an end.[And then it is the beginning of something  new and exciting!.] Well, today is the final day in the Fire Up Your Oven month long baking marathon.I enjoyed preparing myself and the members of my family to taste the bakes that I made for this marathon. It was a very tasty journey!

I am finishing off this marathon with a sweet bake.For the final day I have used vanilla as the flavoring and made these delicious and addictive short bread cookies.

The kids were heads over heels in love with these cookies.I send some in Lil Angel’s snack box and she came both happy and sad. Happy that I sent these cookies and her friends loved it and sad that she got to share most of it and had just a few for the snack time!!So the next day I sent a lot more extra for her to share with her friends.

I used the vanilla essence that Nandini had given us in the goody bag during the Blogging Marathon #50th edition celebration. In this marathon, I have used most of the stuffs – props and edible gifts. I still got some more edible gifts left over which I will be using in the coming days.

So, for today, I have these delicious and addictive cookies….

 I used:
Adapted from Joy of baking
Makes about -110 mini cookies

All purpose flour – 1 cup
Butter- 1/2 cup
Powdered sugar-1/4 cup
Salt-1/8 teaspoon
Vanilla essence-1/2 teaspoon

Chocolate frosting
Silver pearls

Cream butter in a bowl till fluffy, add sugar and beat till the mixture is smooth.Put in the vanilla essence and mix for a minute.

In a bowl take the flour and add the salt.Mix.Add this to the butter mixture and mix to combine.

Flatten the dough and wrap in a cling sheet and chill the dough for an hour till it is firm.Remove from the fridge after an hour and remove the cling sheet.Take out a small portion of the dough and flatten it. Wrap the remaining dough and place in the fridge till the first batch is baked. If left out for too long, the dough becomes too soft to roll out. Using cookie cutter, stamp out shapes and remove them carefully from the board. Scrape back the excess dough left over after stamping out the shapes with the cookie cutter and use it along with the next batch of dough.

Place on a baking tray lined with parchment paper and bake at 120 degree C for 10-12 minutes / till the side turn light brown.Since the cookies were small, they got done very fast. Once the cookies are done, transfer to a wire rack. Repeat this with the remaining dough.

Brush the chocolate frosting and drop a few silver pearls on the coated side.The cookies are ready to be savored….

Note:

• Roll out the dough in such a way that the thickness of the disc is the same so that the cookies bake uniformly. 
• My cookie cutters are really small. You can use any size / shape that you prefer.
• Baking time will differ based on the size and thickness of the cookies.
• It will be a little soft on baking even if the sides are brown. The cookies will turn crisp once cooled.
• Store the cookies in an air tight container once cooled.
•  I placed the cut out cookies in the fridge while one batch was in the oven. Saves  lot of time and this also prevents the cookies from spreading out while baking.
• Brushing it with chocolate is optional but it looks and tastes great.
• The salt really perks up the flavors,so don’t skip it.

  Sending this to Srivalli’s Blog Anniversary Mela