Baking Cashew Shortbread Cookies

I share my absolute all-time favorite cookie recipe with you today.  Regular followers of this blog will already know that I love shortbread and nuts. Combine the two and you have a winner. This recipe is decadence itself and simply melts in the mouth. On top of everything else, it is also very easy to make.

Add 250 g butter to a mixing bowl. If the butter is hard, melt it in the microwave. Butter at room temperature works best. Do not substitute the butter for margarine. Shortbread does not taste like proper shortbread if you do not use real butter.

Add 4 tablespoons of sugar to the butter. Cream the butter and the sugar.

Add 1/4 teaspoon of salt to the butter and sugar mixture. (You will note that I had to melt the butter which made the creaming process impossible. Melted butter will give the same results, but the dough will be a little more sticky when rolling the balls).

Add 2 teaspoons (10 ml) of vanilla essence to the mixture. Mix well.

Add 2 cups (500 ml) of ground Cashew Nuts to the mix.

I use a grinder to chop the nuts.

The nuts need to be quite finely chopped and you will often see recipes instructing you to press the nuts through a sieve. I prefer to keep it more roughly chopped as I like to bite into a nut on the odd occasion.

Add a cup (250 ml) of cake flour. Sieve the dry ingredients.

Add a cup (250 ml) of maizene/cornflour. This also needs to be sieved.

Mix all the ingredients well.

Roll the dough into balls and space them evenly on a baking tray that has been prepared with a non-stick spray. I managed to get 46 balls from the mix. Stick the cookies in a preheated oven at 160°C for 30-45 min.

Put about two cups of icing sugar in a round bowl.

Remove the cookies from the oven when they turn slightly brown.

Roll the hot cookies in the icing.

Let the cookies cool down on a wire rack. Once they are cold, transfer them to an airtight container.  Empty the leftover icing over the cookies in the container.

Enjoy the delight on your family's faces when you serve them these delectable delights. Word to the wise: RATIONS!

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