Almond shortbread

After a week of hectic life, I find myself seeking relief in the warmth of my little haven at home. I decide to try something new: a shortbread petite.

Recipe: Almond shortbread (make 16 small pieces)

Ingredients:
- 2/3 cup King Arthur unbleached all purpose flour
- 1/3 cup almond meal
- 2 TB cornstarch
- 1/2 tp table salt
- 6 TB butter
- 3 TB white sugar
- 1/2 tp vanilla extract
- a few raw almonds, soaked and sliced

Procedure:
1. Mix flour, almond meal, cornstarch and 1/4 tp salt in a medium bowl.
2. chop butter into small pieces. Then mix in the white sugar. Use a fork to mix the two together while flaking the butter, until it forms a smooth thick paste. Then add in the vanilla extract. Continue to mix until the vanilla is well distributed.
3. Add the softened butter by spoonful into the flour mixture and use hand to mix them together until they are just incorporated to form one ball of dough. When forming the dough, sprinkle the remaining 1/4 tp of salt in very small batch at a time.
4. Make small 1" balls out of the dough. Press each down into a mini-tart mold.
5. Place a slice of soaked almond on each piece of dough, pressing it down.
6. Preheat oven to 300F. Place the tart tray in the oven and bake at 300F (or slightly lower temperature such as 275F) for 18-20 minutes, until the top is lightly brown.

Results:
1:45pm, flours and salt mixed:

1:45pm, butter chopped and mixed with sugar:

1:53pm, butter flaked with a fork:

1:57pm, texture of the butter when softened by flaking:

1:58pm, initial look when the butter is mixed into the flours:

2:01pm, half-mixed dough:

2:03pm, fully incorporated dough:

2:05pm, dough shaped into a long tube and cut roughly into small pieces:

2:16pm, dough shaped into balls and pressed down into tart molds:

2:18pm, raw almonds soaked for a few hours and sliced:

2:21pm, dough balls with almonds pressed down on them:

2:46pm, dough in the midst of baking:

2:53pm, shortbread baked 20 minutes:

2:54pm, look of the top and bottom of the shortbread:

3:02pm, shortbread returned to oven to keep warm and to dry up:

3:48pm, the interior of a shortbread after it has been left in the oven for 50 minutes as the oven temperature drops from 250F down to 150F. No further browning takes place. The texture becomes nicely crispy and crunchy.

Observations:

1. It has been recommended that the molding tray be chilled before molding the dough so as to preserve the shape of the shortbread. I did not do that. I wonder how big a difference it could make.
2. I use table salt instead of kosher salt in this recipe because the recipe has no water added to dissolve the salt. So kosher salt may be too coarse to mix well. Moreover, I add 1/4 tp of the salt at the beginning of the mixing process, and sprinkle the remaining 1/4 tp during the dough formation. This results in having distinctively noticeable small grains of salts in the shortbread.
3. I probably should not have used soaked almonds, or at least, toast them dry before using them. Drying the almonds could improve on the shell life of the shortbread.
4. After baking them 20 minutes, they look good, and well baked. The color is beautifully light brown. They are a little softer than I'd like. So I place them in a rake and leave them in the oven for an hour longer while leaving the oven off. To prevent it from further browning, I let some hot air out of the oven first before leaving them there. So the shortbread is kept around 250F and slowly cooling down to 150F during the hour. This yields excellent results. After an hour or two, the shortbread has nicely dried up without becoming over cooked.

Wow! This is a big success for me, in the arena of cookie and shortbread baking. I have baked an almond cookie once and that was not all that successful. This experiment has gone much better. What I like very much about this recipe, compared with one almond cookie recipe, is that the shortbread has a more salty taste and less sweetness. I like the crispy and buttery taste very much.

I study this recipe and compare it with my rose water almond cookie recipe . What I notice is as follows:

Flour:
  shortbread: 2/3 cup flour + 1/3 cup almond meal + 2 TB cornstarch (= about 1 cup)
  cookie: 3/4 cup flour + 1/4 cup almond meal (= about 1 cup)

Butter:

  shortbread and cookie both uses 6 TBs

Sugar:
  shortbread: 3 TBs white granulated sugar
  cookie: 3/4 cup confectionary sugar!
Salt:
  shortbread: 1/2 tp
  cookie: 1/4 tp
Other ingredients:
  shortbread: 1/2 tp vanilla extract
  cookie: 1/2 tp vanilla extract + 1 TB rose water + 1 large egg

So the two recipes have about the same total amount of flour to butter ratio (1 cup of flour+almond meal, to 6 TB butter). The shortbread has more salt and much less sugar than the cookie. The cookie recipe uses an egg, making the dough much more moist.

Conclusion:
I think I've hit my favorite composition of shortbread, namely:
 1 cup flours + 6 TB butter + 2 to 3 TB sugar + 1/2 tp salt + 1/2 tp vanilla extract or other flavor