The Simplest Shortbread Shines: Sumac and Vanilla Shortbread

When I saw a Facebook post from epicurious about some "Sumac and Vanilla Shortbread," I immediately clicked through to get to the recipe (yeah, I guess social media algorithms have me all figured out, since I end up baking a lot of things after I see them on Facebook or Instagram). Then I realized the recipe is from Honey & Co. at Home. I don't own the cookbook, but I do own and like Honey & Co. The Baking Book -- so it was an easy decision to give the recipe a try, especially because I still have sumac on hand.

These shortbreads are slice-and-bake vanilla cookies rolled in a mixture of sumac and sugar before baking. The dough only requires five ingredients: softened butter, powdered sugar, flour, vanilla bean seeds, and salt. The recipe says you can make the dough in a food processor or with a mixer; I used my KitchenAid stand mixer. 
 
I formed the dough into a rectangular log with rounded corners and chilled it for a few hours. Even though the recipe says you should roll the log in a mixture of sumac and sugar before chilling it, I waited until the dough was cold and firm before coating it, to avoid distorting the shape of the log during this step.
When I was ready to bake, I rolled the log in the sumac sugar and cut it into thick slices. This dough sliced easily and maintained its nice neat shape throughout. The final cookies ended up quite uniform and attractive, with tops speckled with vanilla seeds and a slightly glossy finish. While the sumac was a deep crimson before baking, it darkened considerably and looked almost black by the time I took the cookies out of the oven. By contrast, the cookies in the recipe photo have a much lighter coating -- both in the sense that they look like they have a lot less sumac, and because the sumac is the same reddish color mine was before baking. 

The first thought that popped into my mind when I tasted a cookie was that I couldn't taste the sumac at all, despite the generous coating of sumac sugar. But my next thought was, holy cow are these cookies delicious. These were amazing shortbreads -- crisp, buttery, and with a vanilla flavor that really sang. The texture was perfect. I was impressed and would definitely make these again, maybe without the sumac coating. Or I might replace it with sanding sugar or perhaps a mixture of granulated sugar and powdered freeze-dried fruit. I'm pretty sure you could pair this simple but satisfying vanilla cookie with just about any coating. Even though I don't think these cookies delivered much on the sumac front, I still think they hit it out of the park.
 
Recipe: "Sumac and Vanilla Shortbread" from Honey & Co. at Home by Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer, recipe available here from epicurious. 

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