It’s been a while since I’ve posted a shortbread recipe, and I would like to share this almond marzipan variation with you.  I’ve been looking for ways to gussy up my shortbread, and these Chinese moon cake molds, that I found online, seem to be doing the trick.  They’re made for thicker cakes, but instead, I simply rolled out my dough to the desired 1/4 inch and used the molds to cut and stamp my cookies.  It’s much more time consuming then the usual roll a log and slice it with a knife method, but I find the stamped cookies to be charming and well worth the effort.  For this shortbread recipe you’ll need to use a food processor, it’ll help you grind your almonds into your butter, sugar, and flour in a way that will bind your dough together without making it overly gummy and moist.  Your almonds should melt into the dough, only surfacing in the flavor and little crunchy bites.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) Butter
• 2/3 cup Powdered Sugar
• 1 tsp Almond Extract
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 2 cups Flour
• 4 oz Marzipan
• 1/2 cup slivered and peeled Almonds

Directions:

1. Combine all of the ingredients in a food processor until the dough comes together.
2. Chill, tightly wrapped, dough in the refrigerator if it is too soft to mold.  If you don’t want to individually shape your shortbread, you can roll it into a log, and chill it that way.  Then when it’s time to shape the dough you can just slice up the log.  Here‘s an example of this method from a past shortbread recipe.
3. 20 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 325 F (~163 C).
4. Roll out, mold, and/or cut your dough.
5. Place the cookies on greased or parchment lined baking sheets.
6. Bake for ~18 minutes.