Chocolate shortbread cookies are simple, easy to make, and absolutely heavenly. If you’re looking for the perfectbeginner’s baking recipe, look nun further — our chocolate shortbread cookie recipe is just what you’ve been searching for! With just a few ingredients that you most likely already have in your cupboard, you can make a yummy batch of these classic cookies in no time.
Here’s What You Need
Every good baker is prepared, so let’s get you ready to take on this recipe!
Below is a list of the ingredients that you’ll need to bake these delicious chocolate shortbread cookies.
- 1 Cup Flour
- ½ Cup Butter
- ½ CupPowdered Sugar
- ½ Cup Unsweetened Baking Cocoa
That’s it! Just four simple ingredients to make a batch of cookies that are nothing short of manna from heaven. Once you have your ingredients assembled, it’s time to get started with prepping!
Preparing Your Workspace
Any baker will tell you that a neat and tidy kitchen is absolutely essential for successfully completing a recipe. The nuns who inspired our company name would add that cleanliness is next to Godliness, and they seem to have indeed been right — a clean kitchen is easier to bake in!
Before you get started with this recipe, make sure your kitchen is cleaned up, organized, and ready to be put to good use. Once your workspace is neat and tidy, gather up your tools — you’ll need a few essential items at the ready before you start prepping your dough.
- A large mixing bowl
- A whisk
- A rolling pin
- Plastic wrap
- Parchment paper
- One cookie tray
- Your favorite cookie cutters
Once you have your tools laid out and ready to go, it’s time to start prepping your dough. We hope you appreciated that little rhyme!
It’s Kneading Time!
At this point in the baking process, it’s time to lay the foundation for a fabulous batch of cookies. That means we’ll need to knead some dough! You’ll make the dough for these cookies by combining your dry ingredients — flour and cocoa — with a mixture of powdered sugar and butter. To start the dough-prepping process, combine your half cup of powdered sugar and 1 cup of flour in your mixing bowl.
Once you have combined the butter and sugar, use your whisk to beat the mixture until it has a thick, creamy consistency. The powdered sugar should easily dissolve into the butter as you use the whisk to mix them together in perfect harmony. After that, you’re halfway through the dough-making process!
Next, gently combine the mixture of butter and sugar with your cup of flour and a half cup of unsweetened baking cocoa. You don’t need to mix with the whisk vigorously — just use it to combine the four ingredients. You’ll be using your hands to knead the dough and finish fully blending the ingredients into their final form.
Now that the ingredients are combined, you can remove them from the bowl and set the mixture on a clean, flat surface. The biggest countertop in your kitchen is an ideal location for this step in the process. Once you’ve selected your surface and made sure it’s ready to use, you can transfer the mixture of ingredients from the mixing bowl onto the countertop.
To create your dough, gently knead the mixture of ingredients with your hands until it has formed into a soft, easily moldable ball. Before you portion out the dough into individual cookies, you’ll first need to chill it in the fridge for an hour. Refrigerate your dough before you get out your cookie cutter — this will ensure that the dough is strong and firm enough not to crumble before you get it in the oven!
Once the dough is kneaded, wrap it in a thin layer of plastic wrap to protect it. Then, stick the ball of dough in the refrigerator for an hour. You can use the free time to clean up the kitchen!
Cutting Out Some Cookies
After an hour has passed, it’s time to pull the chilled dough out of the fridge and portion it out into individual cookies. You can use your favorite cookie cutter shapes — stars, hearts, etc. — to create a batch of uniquely sized and shaped cookies that look and taste incredible.
Before you try to put your cookie cutters to use, you’ll first need to roll the ball of dough flat with a rolling pin. On a clean, flat surface, run your rolling pin over the dough until it sits flat, about half an inch thick. If necessary, you can sprinkle some flour on the surface to make it easier to roll and maneuver the dough.
Once the dough is laid out flat, it’s time to use your cookie cutters! It may be a challenge, but do what you can to make sure that as little dough as possible goes to waste. You can make the most of your dough by cutting cookie shapes only a few centimeters apart from each other.
Time To Bake!
Now that your cookies are cut out, lay them out about an inch apart from each other on a cookie sheet wrapped in parchment paper. Our recipe yields about 15 cookies that should easily fit on a single cookie sheet. However, if you chose to double the recipe to get 30 cookies, it’s best to spread out your batch between two separate baking sheets. That way, you won’t accidentally end up with one giant cookie!
Once the cookies are laid out on a baking sheet, preheat your oven to between 300 and 320 degrees Fahrenheit. If you tend to over-bake your recipes by accident, it’s best to play it safe and opt for the lower temperature. Your cookies may need longer to bake, but your risk of accidentally extending their time in the oven will be much lower.
To keep the cookies from sticking, you can spray your cookie sheet down with cooking oil or lightly glaze it with butter. However, a piece of parchment paper usually provides sufficient protection against sticky cookies. To make sure your dough stays strong and does not crack or crumble, you can refrigerate the cookies on the baking sheet while you let the oven preheat.
Once the oven is heated up, gently slide your baking sheet in and let the cookies bake for ten minutes before checking on them. Once you reach the 10-minute mark, take a look at your cookies to see how they are doing. If you chose to bake your shortbread cookies at a lower temperature, they might need up to another 10 minutes in the oven. If you opted for 320 degrees Fahrenheit, your cookies may be all the way done between the 10- and 15-minute mark. Every batch of cookies can bake a bit differently, so it’s best to keep a watchful eye on your batch and pull them out early rather than late. Your shortbread cookies will continue to bake once you pull them out of the oven and start cooling, so you shouldn’t have to worry about them being undercooked. In addition, these cookies have no ingredients in them that are unsafe to eat uncooked.
The Cool-Down
It’s always tempting to start eating cookies right after they come out of the oven, but it’s best to wait a few minutes with this recipe. As your shortbread cookies cool, their texture will be perfected, and they’ll taste even better than fresh out of the oven. Let your cookies cool for at least 30 minutes before you dig in. It’s hard to wait, but it’s worth it!
Once your cookies are baked, they can be stored in the fridge for several weeks. Or, you can stick your batch in the freezer to keep them fresh for much longer. To keep your shortbread cookies from sticking together in the freezer, wrap each individual cookie in a piece of parchment paper and lay the batch on top of each other. This storage technique will keep your cookies fresh and tasty for weeks!
Not Feeling Like Baking? We’ve Got You Covered
If you’re not a big fan of spending too much time in the kitchen, we hear you. Sometimes, it’s a lot more fun when someone else has already carefully prepared a sweet treat for you to enjoy, no effort required. If you’re craving delicious shortbread cookies but don’t feel like baking, you’ve come to the right place. Nunbelievable’s shortbread cookies are soft, sweet, and made with a mission, and they come in four heavenly flavors for you to enjoy — original, baobab, lemon poppy seed, and chocolate. For every shortbread cookie that you buy from Nunbelievable, we’ll donate a meal to feed the hungry in the United States.
Our mission as a company is tofight to end hunger and spread love and kindness by baking delicious cookies. We believe something as simple as a sweet treat can change a life, and we’ve seen it happen. Joining us in our fight to end hunger is as simple as enjoyingNunbelievable cookies for dessert!
Sources:
https://www.biggerbolderbaking.com/how-to-make-powdered-sugar/
https://www.bhg.com/recipes/how-to/bake/keep-cookies-from-crumbling-sticking-to-the-pan/
https://www.feedingamerica.org/our-work/fighting-to-end-hunger
