Brown Sugar Shortbread

Once in a while, Cafe Madeleine in San Francisco will quietly put out a large glass jar of brown sugar shortbread bars. The bars are thick and moist and leave crumbs around your lips when you bite into them. They are best taken with coffee or black tea and enjoyed in the afternoon, or on especially cold and grumpy mornings.

Making brown sugar shortbread was another first for me. I found the recipe on Epicurious, and modified it a slight bit, using salted butter and omitting the salt, and ignoring the sugar and cinnamon topping. (Recipe after picture)

Brown Sugar Shortbread

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
2 cups all purpose flour

Using an electric mixer, cream butter until fluffy. Add the brown sugar and mix until incorporated. Then the flour and using a rubber spatula, mix flour until just combined – do not over mix. (I have no idea why the ominous tone about this, probably because the shortbread won’t be as flaky.)

The mixture will resemble sand more than dough. This is okay. (I say this because I was worried, I had no idea it would look like this. But it did and it was okay.) Press the “sand” into a lightly buttered 9-inch round SpringForm pan, or any pan you want, and cut into desired sizes. Pierce each piece with a fork a few times. Bake in a preheated oven at 325 for about an hour, or until golden brown and the sides are firm. Once out of the oven, re-cut the slices you made before putting in the oven. Cool before storing.

The shortbread was wonderfully soft, moist, and hot out of the oven. The next day it firmed up a bit to a regular shortbread consistency.