In a moment of scrumptious serendipity, I came across Lex Culinaria’s lemon curd recipe. I had just indulged myself at a friend’s kitchen with shortbread bars dipped in tangy curd and couldn’t push these flavors out of my head.
Lex’s recipe is different from the curd recipes I’ve made in the past in that it doesn’t utilize cornstarch as a thickening agent. The power of heat and egg yolks takes this recipe into a thick pudding-like consistency.
Using my Mom’s Shortbread recipe, I added crystallized ginger and ended up with a new sub creation: ginger sugar. I keep my crystallized ginger in the freezer, and wanted to make sure the bits were cut up really small for the shortbread, so I added a couple slices of the ginger to sugar in a food processor and made a surprisingly snow like sugar. It’s fluffy, but packs well like brown sugar, and has the essence of ginger through out.
Mom’s original recipe makes a lot of shortbread, as she calls for a 15″ x 17″ pan. I often cut this recipe down by 1/4th to just make a couple of pieces of shortbread, and spread the dough out onto a baking sheet free form style.
Ginger Shortbread
cut down recipe. This amount of shortbread dough makes for a couple of cookies…
In a food processor combine:
- 1/3 cup of sugar
- 1/3 cup of crystallized ginger
Whirl around till thoroughly combined and the sugar looks like lemon sorbet.
In a mixer, beat 1/4 lb (1 stick) of butter till soft and smooth. Add the ginger sugar and 1/4 tsp of vanilla. Beat till well mixed. Add 1 cup of flour and 1/2 tsp of salt. Mix till the dough forms a ball. Turn out onto a baking sheet and flatten out to a smooth even shape.
Sprinkle the flattened dough with granulated sugar and pierce evenly with a fork (so bubbles won’t appear).
Bake at 325F for 20 minutes or until the edges turn golden. Allow to cool slightly, but cut into shapes while still warm.
11 Comments
i HEART this post
oh yes! I need to make ginger snow.
Yum!!!! This sounds like a great way to use lemon curd!
I’m tempted to kiss my “diet” good-bye!
- Think motivation!
Confession- when I made this I cut the recipe down even more! I based it on 1/2 stick of butter that way I’d only have a couple of cookies. That plus the share principle (make Steve eat some) make this less bingable.
luv you Mom
–McAuliflower
YUMMMM. Two of my favorite flavors ( if you count the butter). Who’d a thunk it? I can’t WAIT to try these.
OOPS, I meant THREE if you count the butter!!!!
I never think to include butter as a “flavor”… thanks for the grin Heather!
–McAuliflower
Hi Mc
I tried to link to the lemon curd recipe, but the page was not found. Any clues what I’m doing wrong??
Thanks
thanks for the heads up, its fixed now.
–McAuliflower
Wow,
A great blog and lovely pictures….yummy recipes man!!
I stumbled upon this site jus a few mins back…and would love to hang around here for quite sometime…nice da!!
I ll try this ginger shortbread and wud let u know..!!
This sounds so delicious! I am a huge lemon fan.
Wow! That looks amazing. I love ginger and have begun to love lemon in my “old” age. Seems like a great combination. Your photograph is beautiful.
Amazing photo!
I am SO making these this week. I adore ginger and love the rich texture and flavor of good shortbread. I’ll post how they come out on my blog.
