Christmas Shortbread Cookies : Alsace Bredele Sablé Econo

It’s this time of the year again and as usual I am making Bredele cookies which are Christmas shortbread cookies to give to my friends, neighbours and family members.  We also keep a few for us to eat over the Christmas period.

I have made these since I was about 10 years old, I think they were the first ones my mum showed me how to make. We did not only make them for Christmas but we made them all year round as they are a nice and very easy to make biscuit. Everyone I have given them to like them.

You can alter the recipe if you want, the original recipe is a cheap option (my mum used margarine block). I prefer the biscuits made with butter so they work out slightly more expensive but taste far better.

Ingredients for Christmas shortbread cookies

250g butter
250g sugar
500g plain flour (or 250g nuts and 250g flour)
1 tsp of baking powder
1 egg

Method

Mix the flour and baking powder
Add the sugar.
Add the softened butter cut in small pieces
Add the egg

Using a mixer (like a Kenwood) with a K beater  Mix a low speed until it forms a dough. Obviously you can do this by hand (you may need your butter to be slightly softer) and mix until you get a dough.

Roll small amounts of dough on a floured surface and cut with biscuits cutters (Any shape will be good)

To ensure your dough does not get too floury, use the left over dough and add some of the dough which you have just made. Try not to over work the dough, as if you do, the biscuits will be tough.  Bake at 180 C until slightly golden on the edges. It takes approx 10 minutes per batch but this is only guidance as it may differ with different ovens.

Hope you enjoy baking these cookies which are easy to make with even with kids in the lead up to Christmas or during the festive holidays. You can use our tip before to change the flavour of the Christmas shortbread cookies so you can bake them all year around.  You can play around with the cookie cutters too to create different shortbread cookie shapes such as animal shapes, numbers or alphabets which are fun for little hands.

Alternative flavour:  To make them different, you can add the zest of a couple of lemons and ice them with lemon icing or you can also make them with different nuts, I like mine with either ground almonds or ground hazelnuts (I reduce the flour to 250g and add 250g of nuts).

Recipe by: Brigitte Kershaw

You may want to read this:

Alsace Bredele – Walnut Biscuits for Christmas

Alsace Bredele – Printen Cookies for Christmas

Alsace Bredele – Chequered Biscuits for Christmas