easy mandarin slice shortbread cookies

These are my absolute favorite cookies. They are the perfect balance of sweet, buttery, and slightly bitter and they don’t take too long to make. Although I wouldn’t consider them to be very healthy, they are certainly worth the calories.

Baking as an Art

I have found that these cookies are a great conversation starter. Most people are not very familiar with the idea of placing an entire mandarin slice on top of cookies. This can be done with essentially any type of fruit. I just happened to have an insane amount of mandarins lying around.

Baking is more of an art than a science. In order to turn a dough or a batter into a fluffy pastry, most baked goods feature a flour, lipid, egg and liquid.

The ratio of these four ingredients must be perfect in order to get air bubbles to saturate the dough as its cooking, in turn making a successful product. The air is why baked goods rise in the oven. Sometimes yeast is required to help accelerate the amount of air incorporated into the product. Glutenous flour is usually the best for getting an elastic texture in the baked goods, but it is associated with a few gastrointestinal diseases and is a common allergen. Large eggs are the most common for baking, this is because measurements matter and large eggs tend to fulfill that ratio easier.

Generally, cookies have a much thicker dough than something like cake or brownie batter. These cookies in particular are shortbread, meaning that the dough is even more crackly and less sticky than most other cookies.

Why Mandarins

Mandarins are one of the sweetest fruits in the citrus family. They are also small and have thin rind, making them easy to cut into thin slices.

Overview

Ingredients:

– 2-3 mandarin oranges

– 1/2 cup of butter

– 1 large egg

– 1 egg yolk

– 1 3/4 cup flour

– 1 tablespoon almond extract

– 3/4 cup of sugar

– pinch of cardamom

– powdered sugar

How to make:

1. Wash oranges thoroughly and slice them as thin as possible. This recipe makes about 12 cookies so you’ll need 12 good slices. A sharp knife helps for this part.

2. Dry the mandarin slices as much as possible and put them to the side.

3. Beat softened butter and 1 egg until fluffy and well mixed, then add flour, sugar, almond extract, cardamom, and squeeze a little juice from any remaining oranges you haven’t sliced.

4. Preheat oven to 350 and put the dough in the freezer while the oven preheats.

5. Take out the dough and roll it into a log with about a 2-2.5 inch diameter. Mark 11 lines on the dough to cut into 12 cookies.

6. Cut the dough on the lines and place the cookies on a baking sheet.

7. Press the orange slices into the cookies and brush with egg yolk. Then generously sprinkle sugar on top of the cookies.

8. Bake for 15 minutes. (The cookies will not brown much, expect shortbread color)

9. After the cookies cool, sprinkle with powdered sugar and enjoy!