THE FESTIVAL CARNET
Cinnamon and lemon Christmas shortbread
Cinnamon and lemon zest shortbread stars, with some lemon icing features. The sheet also specifies two variants: Bourbon vanilla and four-spice.
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Cinnamon and lemon zest shortbread stars, with some lemon icing features. The sheet also specifies two variants: Bourbon vanilla and four-spice.
Prepare the ingredients before starting and leave enough room to cool the batches. The times indicated are benchmarks: the edge, underside and texture of the cookie count more than an exact minute. The recipe is proposed for the family kitchen.
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The preparation step by step
Weighing and preparing
Weigh 250 g of flour, 80 g of icing sugar, 4 g of cinnamon and 1 g of salt separately. Cut 125 g of unsalted butter into small dice. The butter should be cool but soft enough to leave a dent when pressed with a finger. Prepare a small bowl for the egg and two sheets of baking paper.
Prepare the egg
Break a medium egg in the small bowl. Remove any shell fragment, then beat it with a fork and weigh 50 g. Keep any excess for another preparation. This measured liquid brings the dry ingredients together.
Rub the butter into the dry ingredients
Combine the weighed dry ingredients and diced butter in the bowl. Rub in briefly with your fingertips until you have fine crumbs and no large pieces of butter. Avoid working the mixture in your palms for too long, as this would warm it.
Gathering without kneading
Add the 50 g of beaten egg and the lemon zest. Mix with a spatula, then press the crumbs together by hand. Stop as soon as the dough comes together evenly; it does not need to become stretchy like brioche dough.
Refrigerate the dough
Flatten the dough into two 2 cm thick discs, cover them and place them in the refrigerator for 1 hour. Leave one half in the refrigerator while you work the other; a thick ball would cool less regularly.
Regularly
Preheat the oven to 170 °C, conventional oven setting (no fan). Roll the first half between two sheets of baking paper to a thickness of 4 mm. Turn the paper between passes of the rolling pin. If the dough cracks sharply, wait 3 to 5 minutes before continuing.
Cut the biscuits
Cut the stars by 5 cm. Lift the pieces with a palette knife and place on a cold lined baking tray, leaving 2 cm between them. Press the offcuts together, roll out once more and keep the smallest pieces for a separate batch.
Cook one plate at a time
Bake on the middle shelf for 10 to 12 minutes. Start checking after 8 minutes: the edges should be lightly golden and the centres paler. The cookies are still slightly soft when they come out of the oven; waiting for them to be hard in the oven would dry them out.
Cool without breaking
Rest the tray on a heatproof surface for 5 minutes, then transfer the biscuits to a wire rack. Bake the second tray meanwhile. Wait at least 20 minutes after the last batch before storing or decorating the biscuits.
Mix the lemon icing
In a bowl, work 80 g of icing sugar and 12 g of lemon juice per spoon. The icing should flow slowly in ribbon. If it is too thick for the pouch, add one or two drops of water; if it drips immediately, wait a minute before adding more.
Decorate and dry
Pour the icing into a small cone and draw two or three lines on each cold star. The biscuit should remain largely visible. Let it dry flat for at least 2 hours, longer if the lines still stick, before layering.
Conservation. Store completely cold cookies in an airtight box, in a cool and dry room. Consume them within 5 days. Separate the filled biscuits from those that need to stay crunchy.
Recipe proposal with quantities and step by step. Times vary depending on the material: follow also the markers of texture and cooking.
The benchmarks for success
One plate, one thickness
Group pieces of comparable size on the same plate. Keep the second baking tray cold: a paste placed on hot metal would melt before cooking.
The dough becomes sticky
Put it back in the fridge for 10 minutes instead of adding large amounts of flour. Repeat the display between two sheets of baking paper.
Bourbon Vanilla Variant
For vanilla shortbread, remove the 4 g of cinnamon and zest. Make a Bourbon vanilla pod, scrape the seeds and mix them with the 80 g of sugar. Keep all other quantities; leaves the biscuits plain, without the icing ingredients.
Variant four-spice
Replace the 4 g of cinnamon with 3 g of food four-spice mixture and preserve the zest. The proportions of dough and icing remain the same.
Variant almond and lemon
Replaces 50 g of the 250 g of flour with 50 g of ground almonds. Remove the cinnamon, keeps the zest and icing. The dough can be more friable: spread it between two leaves. This version adds the almond allergen.
Questions Before You Start
Can I make the dough the day before?
Yes for this cookie dough: keep it covered in the refrigerator for a maximum of 24 hours, then soften it a few minutes before spreading it.
Why are my cookies hard?
A long kneaded dough or prolonged cooking makes the cookie firmer. Stop the mixture as soon as the dough gathers and monitors the edge during cooking.
How to predict the preparation time?
The cooking time corresponds to the cumulation of the planned batches. Rest includes cold and cooling; a still sticky decor requires extra drying before storage.
Baking tips for this recipe
- Work the dough just enough to combine the ingredients after adding flour; avoid prolonged kneading.
- Respect the temperature of the butter and the indicated rest. If a cutting paste becomes sticky, cool it before shaping.
- Keep a regular thickness between pieces of the same batch and monitors the edges at the end of cooking. Let cool before garnishing.
Substitutions and variations
To vary a zest, choose another citrus fruit washed and intended for this use, keeping the same amount. Does not automatically replace juice, whose acidity can change the preparation.
More treats for your Christmas table
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