I’m attempting to broaden my taste for sweets and desire to make sweet treats. To do that, I’ll need a few good recipes. Lately I’ve gone through a few bad cookie recipes and began to feel rather unenthusiastic about making them at all. Luckily I stumbled upon this Meyer Lemon and Pistachio Shortbread from Cannelle et Vanille while searching for inspiration to use our Germack Pistachios. I have to say it was a pleasure to find this beautiful blog, the photography is absolutely gorgeous, she makes every entry feel like a dream – check it out! On top of it being so beautiful, it offered the perfect pistachio and cookie inspiration I was looking for, I had to make them at once!

This would be the first shortbread cookie I have ever baked. Certainly won’t be the last – they were delicious. Not too sweet with the perfect amount of lemon… and of course they’re loaded with butter too ;) The texture is nice and crumbly as you would expect from a shortbread cookie and they kept fresh all week. I doubled the recipe for extra enjoyment.

This recipe is adapted from:
Cannelle et Vanille

Ingredients
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
zest of 2 large lemons
about 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 cup pistachios, finely chopped
2 cups all-purpose flour

Prepare the ingredients. Be sure to soften the butter ahead of time. I used Germack Pistachios with the shell, so obviously I had to remove them before chopping. This probably took more time than the rest of the process. Once shelled, I ground them up with my Magic Bullet, it was a coarse mix with varying bits of pistachio. You could use a food processor or a knife to chop them as well. Zest and juice your lemons – the original recipe calls for Meyer’s lemons – I just used the only option of lemon from my local grocer and it worked; I admit I don’t know much about lemons! I’ll have to keep my eye out for Meyer’s lemons and see If I can notice a difference next time.

I used a stand mixer for this but you could easily do it by hand as well. First cream together the butter and powdered sugar. Pour in lemon juice & zest and mix until incorporated. Add flour and salt, mix, and finally include the chopped pistachios. Mix until all ingredients are well combined.

Roll the dough into 2 logs about 2 inches in diameter or so. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours. I wrapped mine in plastic wrap – I planned on chilling them all day before baking and I didn’t want them to dry out. Clearly my logs were not perfectly round, and once they sat on a plate for a while they became even less round. This didn’t seem to affect the taste what so ever.

Preheat oven to 350°. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Cut logs into ¼-½ inch thick disks and bake for 10-12 minutes until lightly golden.

As I took them out of the oven I was eager to taste, I grabbed one with in the first minute and it crumbled to pieces. My heart broke for a minute as I felt I might have failed with these cookies.  I allowed the rest to cool for a bit longer and they ended up setting perfectly. No failures here, they held together nicely and crumbled just as a shortbread cookie should.