Cranberry White Chocolate Shortbreads

Cranberry White Chocolate Shortbreads: Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) and place the oven rack in the center of the oven. Have ready a 9 inch (23 cm) tart pan with a removable bottom. Butter the bottom of the pan.

In the bowl of your electric stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment (or with a hand mixer), beat the butter and sugar until combined. Beat in the vanilla extract, if using. In a separate bowl whisk together the all purpose flour with the salt. Add this mixture to the butter and sugar mixture and beat just until incorporated. Fold in the dried cranberries and white chocolate chips.

Press the shortbread evenly into the tart pan. Prick the surface of the shortbread with a fork to prevent the shortbread from puffing up.

Place in the preheated oven and bake until the shortbread has turned a golden brown color, about 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer shortbread to a wire rack to cool for 5 to 10 minutes before removing from tart pan. Place the shortbread round on a cutting board and cut into 12 wedges. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Makes 12 shortbread wedges.

Cranberry White Chocolate Shortbreads have a wonderfully rich and buttery flavor and are bursting with dried cranberries and chunks of white chocolate. While shortbreads can be made in various shapes and sizes, we will follow tradition here and bake them in a round shape and then cut the round into wedges, called "petticoat tails". The name "petticoat tails" refers to the shape of the shortbread wedges which look like the bell-hoop petticoats worn by court ladies in the 12th century.

Shortbread is made with just a few ingredients; mainly butter, sugar, and flour. So try to use a good quality butter, and you can use unsalted or salted. You can add vanilla extract to the batter or even a small amount of almond extract. And while I have added dried cranberries, you could use dried cherries. For the chocolate chips, I used white, but you could also use semi sweet, bittersweet, or milk.

Whenever you cut a round of shortbread into wedges, there can be the problem of the tips of the shortbreads breaking off. Dorothy Hartley in her lovely book "Food in England" tells us that "Every cook knows how the pointed ends of cut cakes and biscuits break off - so, after several centuries of broken tips, someone evolved the cure: they cut a circle out of the centre before baking......". If you like you can follow Dorothy Hartley's advice and cut out the center before baking. Or you can think of all those broken tips of shortbread as the cook's treat.

Cranberry White Chocolate Shortbreads

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