Eggnog Shortbread

Eggnog.

 You either love it or you hate it.  I personally love the taste of eggnog and have been known to down a glass or two of the stuff over the holidays - with rum of course.  I've been patiently waiting for it to appear in the grocery store because I've had this cookie concept in my head since June.   You really can't go wrong combining eggnog and shortbread and dressing it up with a glossy eggnog glaze and sprinkles.  I recently took a few of the un-iced cookies with me to visit my family.  My cousin Ryan ended up stealing the bag to take back to school to eat for breakfast.  Ah, the life of a university kid!

Eggnog Shortbread

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup icing sugar

1/4 cup eggnog

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

3 cups flour

1/2 cup cornstarch

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

For the glaze:

2 cups icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla

3 tbsp eggnog

Sprinkles of your choice

Directions: 

In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and sugars together until light and fluffy.  Add egg and beat until well incorporated.

Add eggnog and vanilla and mix until combined.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, cornstarch, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and pulse until combined.  If the dough becomes to tough for the mixer, continue mixing the dough by hand until just combined.  Divide the dough in half and refrigerate for at least one hour or overnight.

Preheat over to 350 degrees.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough until its 1/4 inch thick. ** I roll my dough out between two lightly floured pieces of parchment paper.  I have very little counter space and this allows me to rotate the dough a lot easier or move it to another location if I need to.  It's also a lot easier to clean up!

Cut cookies into whatever shape you desire.  I used a 3-inch  linzer cookie cutter to get the fluted edges.

Bake cookies for 8-10 minutes, or until the edges are just slightly turning brown.  **I prefer just the bottoms to be slightly brown, so I found 9 minutes to be the magic time for my oven.  It will also depend on how thin you make the cookies.  If some are thinner, they will brown faster and become crispy.  

Transfer cookies to a cooling rack.

Eggnog Glaze

Stir together the icing sugar, vanilla and eggnog.   I like a thicker consistency so it is spreadable, but not super runny.  I wanted to be able to pipe it onto the cookies, and have it spread slightly, but not run over the edges.  I recommend adding the eggnog in several installments until you get your desired consistency.  To pipe the icing, I used a zip-lock bag and snipped one corner off and it worked like a dream and there was no messy clean-up!  Hurray!!

Recipe adapted from The Fig Tree