Cranberry shortbread

Martha has a recipe for Dried Cranberry Shortbread Hearts in her Cookies book. I've never made shortbread before, and since I was in a cranberry mood, this seemed to be the perfect recipe to try for a first-time shortbread excursion.

Martha's cookies look like this:

The observant TMI reader will notice that my Dried Cranberry Shortbread Hearts are actually squares:

Hearts are nice, but since the shortbread is made in a small 8x8 baking dish, there wouldn't have been many hearts emerging from the batch. Since I made these for a friend's birthday bash, I wanted to have enough to go around. Plus, if I had made the hearts, the scraps would have gone right in my mouth. Right. In. My. Mouth.

And then who knows what would have happened? I might not have stopped with the scraps, I might have started "accidentally" breaking hearts, just so I could eat them up. And then I would go really nuts and just eat the unbroken hearts. And before you know it, I would've eaten the entire 8x8 pan of shortbread!

See how my sweet tooth quickly spirals out of control? My kitchen is a dangerous place for my willpower. It just doesn't stand a chance.

This recipe, like the Magic Blondies recipe from yesterday, is incredibly easy to make. The hardest part was chopping up all of the cranberries.

I served these with the Magic Blondies. Between the two cookies, I definitely filled by cranberry craving.

If you have any dried cranberries in your pantry, I can guarantee you that they are crying out to be used in this recipe. Go on, try it. Hearts or no hearts, this is one delicious shortbread.

Martha Monday!

This weekend, I made Martha's Magic Blondies for a good friend's 50th birthday party.

Here's what Martha's Magic Blondies look like:

And here are mine:

These were very easy to make, and since they are made in a muffin tin with liners, the clean-up is quite easy.

The recipe calls for 2/3 cup each of coconut, dried cranberries, chopped walnuts and chocolate chips. Part of this mixture goes in the dough, and the rest is sprinkled on the top before baking.

I think this made way too much "magic," so the official TMI recommendation is to scale back each of those things to only 1/2 cup. Otherwise you'll have approximately 3/4 cup of the mixture tucked back in your fridge just waiting to be incorporated into some other recipe--trust me on this.

The Magic Blondies were a big hit. I served them with Martha's Dried Cranberry Shortbread Hearts. I guess I was in a cranberry kind of mood--always tart, a little sweet and a lot good for you.

I'll share the Dried Cranberry Shortbread Hearts with you tomorrow. Until then, stay tarty!