I have a confession to make. I love Christmas baking. Cookies of all shapes and sizes and types. Varieties. Yummy.
Every year I make Not Quite Nigella's
cinnadoodles - they have become a Kitty family Christmas tradition - and melting moments. And I usually try to make a different new cookie as well. Last year I made pecan, cranberry and white chocolate cookies (which were delicious) but I was the only one who really liked them. Mr K is not a fan of white chocolate so alas, it was up to me to polish them off. I took one for the team.
I have a serious love of coconut so was thrilled when I stumbled across
this recipe from Smitten Kitchen. I am a huge fan of Deb's cooking. She has never set me wrong. Her double
coconut muffins are some of the best I have ever eaten and her
blueberry crumb bars (also made in this house with raspberries) are heavenly. So when I saw the shortbread recipe I knew that was the one for me.
Make no mistake, this is a fairly high maintenance recipe. It requires chilling repeatedly and rolling out a fairly fragile dough. After reading the comments section about the cookie's tendency to spread, I added some extra flour and mine were fine, but I also froze the dough once it had been cut into hearts. Time consuming, yes, but it worked. And they were delicious. Great by themselves and certainly good with the addition of the chocolate drizzle, but on reflection you do lose a bit of the delicate coconut flavour once you smother it in Lindt 70%. Maybe I should have sprinkled more dessicated coconut on the chocolate?
Dark Chocolate and Toasted Coconut Shortbread
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, Originally from Bon Appetit , April 2004
1/2 cup (about 45g) dessicated coconut
3/4 cup (175g) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup plus 1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon coarse kosher salt or sea salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
50g Lindt dark chocolate, for melting
Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius. Spread coconut on rimmed baking sheet. Bake
until coconut is light golden, stirring occasionally, about 8 minutes.
Cool completely.
Using electric mixer, beat butter and sugar in large bowl until well
blended. Mix in salt and vanilla. Beat in flour in 2 additions. Stir in
toasted coconut. Gather dough together, flatten into a disc and wrap in
plastic. Chill at least 1 hour. (Can be prepared 2 days ahead. Keep
chilled. Soften slightly at room temperature before rolling out.)
Preheat oven to 325°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment
paper. Roll out dough disc between two sheets of baking paper to 1/2cm thickness. Using 4-5cm diameter cookie cutters, cut
dough into rounds. Transfer cookies to prepared baking sheets, spacing 1
inch apart. Gather dough scraps and reroll; cut out additional cookies.Chill dough in freezer for 5-10 minutes before baking in oven.
Bake cookies until light golden, about 15 minutes. Cool on baking
sheets for 10 minutes then transfer cookies to racks and cool completely. Melt chocolate in a bowl over a pot of hot water then drizzle cooled cookies with the chocolate. Allow to sit until chocolate has set.
Store airtight at room temperature up to 1 week. Take it from me, they won't last that long!
Kitty
