Good Ol' Fashioned Shortbread

I was in a baking mood once again this morning and decided to make a batch of shortbread cookies. The ingredients appeared to be really simple: flour, sugar and butter, how hard could that be? The recipe called for 1 1/4 cups of flour, 3 Tablespoons of sugar and 1/2 cup of butter. I was to mix the flour and sugar together in a bowl and then CUT the butter in. Not sure about all of you bakers out there, but I didn't have a fancy gadget to help me cut the butter into the mix and had to revert to using two knives. I tried my best to cut that butter in, but I don't think I did a good job because after the whole cutting process, I was then to form the dough into a ball and knead until smooth. I could hardly get the "dough" into a ball, never mind knead until smooth. After struggling for a while with that, I decided to add a little warm water to the mixture to ensure that it would stick together to at least form a dough. That seemed to work to my advantage and the results of my labors this morning are below:





I have to say that they came out very tasty, just like shortbread cookies that I have purchased from the store. But don't let the "simple" ingredients fool you. I guess I will just need more practice with cutting butter! Till next time!