Shortbread

This has to be one of the quickest, easiest, and simplest home-made desserts possible. With a grand total of four ingredients and clocking in at just 30-35 minutes including prep and bake time, this recipe is a ridiculously easy way to get fat. But hey, if you're looking for comfort food, you just have to bite the bullet and jog the next day to make up for it. (Given that there are apparently 1628 calories in 1 cup of butter... that's a lot of jogging.)

So that's the bad news. The good news is that calorie-counting is a load of nonsense anyway, and these cookies are delicious. :) Here's the recipe that I use, adapted from Joy of Cooking.


Ingredients
1 cup (two sticks) butter
2 cups flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 tsp salt

Directions
Preheat oven to 325F. In a medium bowl, soften butter in microwave -- it should be decisively warmer than room temperature, and starting to melt & liquefy a bit. Either using a whisk or a hand mixer, cream the butter (i.e. mix it up really fast until it looks like really thick cream). Sift together flour, sugar, and salt, pour onto creamed butter. Mix until everything blends together, at which point you'll have what appears to be a rather crumbly dough. Pat the dough into a square baking dish. If all went well, then once you pat it down it should have the texture of a slightly wet shortbread cookie. It'll look something like this.


Push down the edges of the shortbread with a fork. (This is purely for decorative reasons.) Now poke the dough evenly with the fork, so you have holes spaced an inch or so apart. Bake for about 30 minutes on the top rack, or until the crimped edges are starting to brown a little. The middle of the shortbread will still be pretty white, but that doesn't mean it's not ready. Remove from oven, let cool for about 10 minutes, and then cut it up into cookies of the desired shape and size.

Especially tasty with some black tea. :)