I have been up to my eyeballs in sugar lately.  Seriously, I have made over 20 pound worth of frosting this month alone. Heck, I made over 4 pounds of frosting this morning. I made frosting yesterday.  I made frosting the day before yesterday.  What are my plans for tomorrow?  More frosting!  While a lot of my baking has been work related, I have managed it squeeze in a few creative Holiday bakes at home.  The real time crunch has been turning my sticky fingers to recording these endeavors on the Ephemeral Bee.  Ironically, my llama cookies – NO frosting!  The coconut gives them that fuzzy textured look, without the added hassle of sticky frosting, and the rich buttery shortbread flavor shines through on its own volition.  This is the one cookie where it pays to invest in a higher quality cultured butter.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups Flour
• 2/3 cup Powdered Sugar
• 1 cup (2 sticks) cold Butter
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 2 tbsp Vanilla Extract
• Sweetened Coconut Flakes

Directions:

1. Combine all of the ingredients together in a food processor until they come together into a dough.
2. Wrap the dough in plastic.
3. Chill the dough in the refrigerator for a couple of hours or overnight. If you are leaving your dough overnight, make sure that the dough is properly sealed to keep it from drying out.
4. 20 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 325 F (~163 C).
5. Roll out the dough, and use a cookie cutter to cut out the shortbread.
6. Lightly press the coconut flakes into the tops of the cookies.  You want to be firm enough to stick the coconut to the cookies, but not so firm that you end up distorting their shape.
7. Place the cookies on greased or parchment lined baking sheets.  Poke with fork (optional).
8. Bake for ~18 minutes.