Scottish Shortbread Cookies-a Recipe | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Please join me in welcoming Author Michele Rhem, who presents us with her poignant memoirs of the Rabbit Patch, where her diaries weave tales of a simpler, expressive life lost to many, but gathered together in her most familiar environs - the Rabbit Patch.

    My loyal readers of the "rabbit patch diary" know full well my plight with baking cookies. I have had all sorts of disasters. They have turned out as hard as rocks, or just burnt enough to taste bad. Other times, they spread into mush. They have crumbled, cracked and shattered at the first bite. Often, these catastrophes happened when all you had to do was slice the dough from a refrigerator roll of a pre -made concoction. I just stopped the nonsense and bought cookies. Then I became a grandmother- called "Honeybee", and that changed everything. I set out on a mission to bake cookies that would melt in your mouth . . the kind everyone else made.

    Currently, I can make two varieties. One is the "Scottish Short Bread". Jenny, has a neighbor from Scotland, that in her words "lives the way the crow flies" from Jennys' house. She gifted Jenny with a batch of her short breads, last Christmas and Jenny talked about them all year. When I met the friendly Scottish lady, I asked her about the recipe. The next day, she sent a batch and I too thought, they were the best short bread I had ever eaten.

    There are but three ingredients in these delicacies. This in itself is a wonder, if you consider the ingredients in the store bought varieties. I can give testimony, that the cookies keep well, for at least several days. I have a vintage ceramic cookie box, not air tight, and I ate the last one this morning for breakfast.

    The Recipe

    *Pre heat oven to 350 degrees.

    1 cup butter

    1/2 cup powdered sugar

    2 cups all purpose flour

    Cream butter and sugar together,then add flour. The dough may be a bit sticky, so I floured a surface to roll them on. I made mine every bit of a 1/4 inch thick and used a cookie cutter. I suspect you could simply cut them in squares, as well. I cooked mine on a lightly floured stone, but I am a novice and need all the help I can get. The recipe says to bake for 14-16 minutes. I took mine out a few minutes early, before they were a "golden brown", for I was terrified I would burn them. At the first bit of golden I saw, I snatched them out-and they were fine.

    I made heart shaped cookies, that were a good size and the recipe yielded about twenty cookies. It was hard to tell, as we sampled as each batch came out of the oven.

    Cookies,like everything else, are better when shared, so take some to your neighbors, who live "In the way the crow flies".

    Best wishes from the rabbit patch,

    love, Michele