Tag Archives: shortbread

Weekend Baking: Coconut Shortbread Tartlets filled with Mango Curd

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There’s something about Spring, with all of its celebrations that pull friends and family together, beginning with Easter, then Mother’s Day, followed by graduations and wedding showers, that just seem to demand tiny sweet desserts. Desserts that can be picked up and popped into the mouth and disappear as fast as a bag of M&M’s.

Shortbread is one of my favorite spring desserts. So rich and buttery and short on sugar, the cookie-like sweet pairs well with berries and citrus curds. This spring, I’ve added coconut to my shortbread recipe. Pressed into mini-muffin cups, the dough bakes up nicely, turning a golden brown. I’ve discovered lovely mango curd (recipe is in my last post) is absolutely luscious as a filling for these bite-sized coconut shortbread cups.

One of the things I appreciate about shortbread, besides its versatility, is the fact the dough can be made ahead and refrigerated for a couple of days, or slipped into a freezer-strength zip-top bag and kept frozen for a few months. Mixing this shortbread takes no time at all in the food processor.

Once baked, the empty shortbread cups can be stored in the freezer for up to a month. So, for those special occasions when you are expecting many guests, you can make and bake shortbread cups at your leisure, stocking up for the big day.

I plan to have a small supply of baked Coconut Shortbread Tartlets in the freezer this spring. Once mango season has come to an end, the little cups will be ready to fill with lemon curd and berries or homemade ice cream with a drizzle of hot fudge sauce. Or chocolate mousse. Or, how about mini banana cream pies?

Coconut Shortbread Tartlets with Mango Curd Filling

  • 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter (2 1/4 sticks), chilled
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup powdered sugar
  • 2 cups sweetened flaked coconut
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3 large egg yolks
  • 3 tablespoons ice water
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • Mango Curd
  • Whipped cream, fresh mango bits and mint leaves, for garnish

Cut butter into small chunks. In the bowl of a food processor, pulse flour, powdered sugar and salt until well combined. Add coconut and pulse a few times. In a small bowl, whisk together yolks, ice water and vanilla until combined well. Add to flour mixture in food processor and pulse until incorporated.

Form dough into a ball. Divide into two equal pieces. Form each piece into a ball and flatten into a disk. Wrap each disk of dough in plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least 1 hour or up to a week.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Form one disk of dough into 36 equal -sized balls, keeping remaining disk of dough wrapped and chilled. Press dough balls into bottom and up sides of 36 ungreased mini-muffin cups (measuring about 1 3/4 inches across the top and about 1 inch deep). Prick bottom of shortbread shells with a wooden pick. Chill for 15 minutes, or until firm. Bake in middle of preheated 400-degree oven for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden. Cool in cups on rack.

At this point, cooled shortbread cups can be stored in a tightly sealed container in the freezer for a month or two or they can be stored at room temperature in a sealed container for a few days.

When ready to serve, fill each shortbread cup with Mango Curd. Garnish as desired and serve.

The full batch of dough will make 6 dozen shortbread tartlets. You will probably need a double batch of Mango Curd to fill all 6 dozen. One batch is plenty for 1 disk of dough, or 36 tartlets.

You’ll find more shortbread and citrus curd recipes on these older posts on my blog:

Orange Shortbread Bites with Orange Curd

Espresso-Cocoa Nib Shortbread Bites

Raspberry Ribbons

Lemon Curd Breakfast Parfaits

Lemon-Filled Coconut Meringues with Chantilly Cream and Fresh Raspberries

Amazing Brandied Apricot and Almond Shortbread Bars

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I’m amazed at myself. It’s not that I had purposely laid out a plan early in December to mix up more cookie dough than I could possibly have time to bake before Christmas just so that I would have extra dough to play with in January. No, I’m amazed that I remembered I had a wad of cookie dough in the freezer.

In November, when I was participating in a marathon Swedish Ginger Snaps baking day with three other women, I had the opportunity to taste a few kinds of holiday cookies that our hostess, Judy, had already baked up and was storing in her freezer. And this was the middle of November!

Judy shared recipes with me for Chocolate Caramel Thumbprint Cookies. I made those chocolatey two-bite morsels with the soft caramel filling and posted them on this blog. I’ve added that recipe to my line-up of cookies that I make every holiday season. You can click here if you’d like to go right to that recipe.

I was lucky to get Judy’s recipe for Holiday Shortbread Logs. Both ends of chubby little logs of shortbread are dipped in a brandy-flavored glaze and then in chopped pecans. They were melt-in-the-mouth buttery delicious. I mixed up a batch of the dough, but……….never got around to making the logs.

That’s the dough I just rememberd I had in the freezer. I decided to pat the thawed dough into a 9- x 13-inch baking dish and use it as a crust for some apricot topping. Simmering dried apricots in apricot brandy for a couple of minutes, softens the apricots and spikes them with a subtle punch of brandy flavor.

Maybe I’ve been living under a rock, but I did not know that Solo was selling almond paste in a can these days. Solo Almond Paste is available in just about every well-stocked supermarket. It’s soft and moist with distinct yet mellow almond fragrance and flavor. And since I have a real love for the combination of apricot and almond, I had to include it in these bars. Into a struesel topping it went, along with butter, brown sugar, sliced almonds….all good things. I didn’t use the whole 8-ounce can, but almond paste can be refrigerated for a week or so and also stores well in the freezer.

Once baked, the shortbread crust is rich and crunchy. The apricot filling is not too sweet so that you can still taste apricots. And the topping — I’m already making plans to use it on an apple pie.

When Brandied Apricot and Almond Shortbread Bars are cut into dainty little triangles, they are well-suited for tea parties. I think they would be a pretty and tasty addition to a tray of Christmas cookies, too.

For any day, they are just amazing. It’s handy having some of this shortbread dough in the freezer.

If you like this recipe, you might like to see my recipe for Buttery Shortbread.Click here to go to that post.

Brandied Apricot and Almond Shortbread Bars

Brandied Apricot Filling:

  • 8 ounces dried apricots
  • 1 cup apricot brandy, divided

Almond Struesel:

  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 6 tablespoons (packed) golden brown sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • Pinch of salt
  • 1/3 cup crumbled almond paste (about 2 3/4 ounces)
  • 1/4 cup chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
  • 1/4 cup sliced almonds

Shortbread Crust:

  • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup butter, softened
  • 1/2 cup powdered sugar
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

First, make Brandied Apricot Filling: Place dried apricots in a small heavy saucepan. Pour 1/2 cup apricot brandy over the apricots. Place over medium heat and bring to a boil. Boil, covered, for 2 minutes, until apricots are soft. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.

Puree cooked apricots with any brandy left in the pot in a blender or food processor. Slowly pour in remaining 1/2 cup apricot brandy and continue to puree until mixture is quite smooth. Set aside.

Make the Almond Struesel: Whisk flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt to blend in medium bowl. Add almond paste and butter. Rub in with fingertips until mixture begins to clump together. (It can also be mixed with a food processor.) Add almonds and work in with fingertips until well incorporated. Refrigerate until ready to use. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover and keep refrigerated.)

Combine all ingredients for Shortbread Crust in a large mixing bowl. Beat at low speed, scraping bowl often, until ingredients are well mixed, about 3 to 4 minutes.

Line a 9- x 13-inch baking dish with parchment paper, allowing enough paper to come up over the sides of the dish. These will serve as handles to pull the cooled bars from the dish.

Bake the Shortbread Crust in preheated 350-degree oven for 20 minutes, or until the top is just starting to brown.

Remove dish from oven. Spread Brandied Apricot Filling evenly over the hot Shortbread Crust. Sprinkle Almond Struesel over the filling. Press the Filling slightly.

Return to oven and bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. Cool bars completely in dish on wire rack.

Use the parchment paper to pull the cooled bars from the dish. It’s much easier to cut them when they are on a cutting board rather than in the dish.

Cut 4 rows from short end to short end and 8 rows from side to side. Cut each square diagonally to make triangles.

 

 

 

 

Chocolate and Cherries — Double Trouble

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Two desserts — one plate — all for me. Double trouble. Not for may taste buds, mind you. It’s a problem for my waistline. But, when the desserts are so delicious…

I don’t usually eat two desserts at one time. But, let me tell you how this all came about.

First, my son and daugther-in-law were here for a few days with their nine-month-old daughter. They brought a cookbook with them, Cooking for Baby, by Lisa Barnes. As I paged through the book, I noticed recipes for some fruit purees. With at least a couple of pounds of fresh sweet cherries in my refrigerator, I decided to make cherry puree.

I jazzed up the baby-style puree with a vanilla bean, some sprigs of lemon thyme snipped from my garden, and just a little bit of agave syrup to sweeten it up a tish.

On Sunday evening, with friends coming for dinner, I made a tart with a shortbread crust, adding chopped lemon thyme leaves. I spread some cherry puree over the shortbread before I baked it. As soon as it came out of the oven, I slathered more cherry puree over the top and then arranged fresh blueberries over the puree. As the puree cooled, it held the blueberries tightly in place.

And then, guess what? Our dinner guests arrived with a decadent-looking chocolate dessert in hand. And that is how two desserts with a dollop of slightly sweetened whipped cream wound up on each plate that evening.

The rich chocolate cake was a perfect match for the tart with its shorbread crust, cherry puree and fresh blueberries.

I could see this cherry puree swirled through homemade vanilla ice cream, baked into coffee cakes, spooned into dainty little thumbprint cookies and layered into yogurt parfaits. It keeps well in the refrigerator for a few days.

This rich chocolate cake is the same one you see pictured in my last post to this blog, arranged into a 4th of July star. You can click right here to go quickly over to a chocolate cake recipe in Saveur magazine that is very similar to the cake my friend brought over to my houe. And, lucky you if there is a copy of "The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Chocolate" on your book shelf, where the original recipe appears.

Serve the tart alone. Serve the rich chocolate cake alone. Or make them both and serve them together. It’s really not trouble preparing either one. But watch out — eating both of them together could be double trouble.

Cherry Puree

  • 1 pound fresh sweet cherries
  • 1 vanilla bean
  • 2 (4- to 5-inch-long) sprigs of fresh thyme
  • 1 teaspoon agave syrup

Remove pits from cherries. Place them in a food processor and puree, stopping once or twice to scrape down the sides of the workbowl.

Transfer puree to a saucepan. Split vanilla bean lengthwise and use the tip of a knife to scrape the seeds from the bean. The seeds will seem like a paste when scraped away from the bean. Add the bean and the seeds to the puree, along with the thyme sprigs. Heat over medium-low and simmer until the mixture thickens, stirring often. Remove saucepan from heat and stir in agave syrup. Let cool completely. Refrigerate cooled puree in an airtight container for up to 3 days. It can be stored in the freezer for 3 months. Makes about 1 cup.

Shortbread Cherry and Blueberry Tart

  • 3/4 cup butter (1 1/2 sticks) butter, cold, cut into small cubes
  • 3/4 cup powdered sugar
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3 tablespoons chopped lemon thyme leaves
  • 1/2 cup Cherry Puree, divided
  • 1 pint fresh blueberries
  • Whipped cream, for garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine butter, powdered sugar, flour and salt with a wooden spoon or a hand-held electric mixer until dough forms a ball. Add chopped thyme and blend well. Spread dough evenly into the bottom and sides of a 10-inch tart pan. Spread 1/4 cup Cherry Puree over the bottom of the tart. Bake until light brown, 15 to 20 minutes. Place tart on wire rack. Allow to cool in pan for 10 minutes. Spread remaining 1/4 cup Cherry Puree over baked tart. Arrange blueberries, in a single layer, over the Cherry Puree. Allow tart to cool completely before serving. Cut into wedges. Garnish each piece with whipped cream and a cherry. Store in refrigerator.

Whisk it Wednesday: Shortbread Tart

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Working on getting my office organized is a lot like rejuvenating an old house — one thing leads to another. As I worked with the professional organizer a couple of weeks ago, we cleared the top of each of my two desks. Now, when I walk into my office, I marvel at the feeling of lightness and freedom I experience. And I can actually work at my desk.

She’ll be back this afternoon for another round in my office. Our first session led to my purchase of more project pockets. All of those papers need to go somewhere, right? Those that didn’t get tossed need a new home in a project pocket. It also led me to the desktop of my computer. As I weeded through a few of the folders, I realized I have several photos that I had planned to share with you on this blog, but never got around to it. I hate to just delete them. So, I’ve decided I would begin sharing those photos and telling the stories behind them once each week.

Welcome to the first Whisk It Wednesday. I’ll be whisking photos out of folders on my computer and right onto this blog. I’ll be working to prevent a loaded computer from crashing and you will get some photos, recipes and stories that have been forgotten in the dark corners of my computer.

This photo of Shortbread Tart isn’t all that old, really. When I developed Crunchy Peanut Butter & Fudge Delights for this week’s newspaper column, I gave them a buttery brown sugar crust. Made of only flour, brown sugar and lots of butter, it is shorbread in disguise.

Using the same shortbread crust recipe, I created a tart. I patted the dough into the bottom and up the sides of a round ( nine- or ten-inch) tart pan with a removable bottom. If you don’t have a tart pan, you could use a quiche dish or even a large pie tin. Before baking the shortbread, I spread some apricot preserves over the top, sprinkled some sliced almonds over the preserves and then crumbled some shortbread dough that I had kept in reserve over the whole thing.

I’ve made two more of these Shortbread Tarts since that first experiment. Each time it brings raves from tasters. I will stick with the apricot preserves (I used Smucker’s Simply Fruit), but try any flavor you like.

Shortbread Tart, with only five ingredients, is easy to make and easy to eat. It’s what I’ll be making for those times when I just don’t know what to make for dessert. I think I’ll try serving it with one of the new Haagen Dazs five ice creams, each flavor made with only five ingredients. I haven’t tried the new Haagen Dazs flavors yet, have you? As a matter of fact, serve Shortbread Tart and a scoop of Haagen-Dazs five together and the dessert adds up to a 10. That’s perfect.

If you love shortbread, you might also be interested in this recipe that I posted last year for Buttery Shortbread.

Shortbread Tart

  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup (packed) brown sugar
  • 3/4 cup butter (1 1/2 sticks)
  • 1/4 cup apricot preserves
  • 1/3 cup sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix flour, brown sugar and butter. A food processor works well for this. Spread 1/2 cup of this mixture on a plate and set in freezer. Press remaining mixture into the bottom and up the sides of a 9- or 10-inch tart pan with removable sides.

Spread apricot preserves over the top of dough. Pull reserved dough from freezer and crumble it over the preserves. Sprinkle evenly with almonds.

Bake in preheated 350-degree oven for 30 to 40 minutes, until the crust is golden brown. Place pan on wire rack to cool completely. Cut shortbread into wedges and serve.