Cooking with Food Storage: Whole Wheat Almond Shortbread Cookies

This amazing cookie recipe makes a perfect 'gourmet' cookie using only food storage ingredients! I got the original recipe from King Arthur Flour Company. You can see the original post here.

Typically, when I have a food storage recipe that calls for butter, I will use shelf stable cream and make my own butter. However, this time I decided to do something different. Instead of making my own butter, I used canned butter. Red Feather Canned Butter is made in New Zealand. It is a bit pricey, but I have had this can of butter in my food storage for three years and I thought it was time to try it out. I bought mine from Emergency Essentials.

Here's the recipe:

1 cup butter (if using fresh butter from the store, use two sticks.)
1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 tsps vanilla extract (I make my own vanilla extract. It is super easy to do! You can see how to make your own here.)
1/4 tsp almond extract
2 cups all purpose flour (I make my own flour from ground wheat berries. You can see how to make all purpose flour from wheat berries here.)

Start by creaming together the butter, confectioners' sugar, vanilla and almond extract. If you are using butter from the store, make sure it is at room temperature.

Add the flour a little at a time.and mix well.

It only takes a few minutes to mix it all together. When finished, it should look like this.

Divide the dough in half and place into two 9 inch cake pans. I used a shortbread pan that I got from King Arthur Flour. It has designs in the bottom of the pan to make the cookies look pretty.

Grease the bottom of the pans well. Or, you can line the bottoms of the pans with parchment paper and then grease that. I used butter flavored Pam and sprayed the bottom of the pan. Press the dough into the pan. You can use a small rolling pin if you have it. I just used my hands. The dough should be about 1/4 inch thick.

Prick the dough all over with a fork to ensure it doesn't rise while baking. 

The King Arthur Flour website instructions state you can prick the dough in random patterns but that it looks nicer with some kind of symmetry. Here is mine before it went into the oven.

Bake at 300 degrees for 35 minutes. The sun wasn't shining when I made these so I just put them in my regular oven. They should be lightly golden brown on top. As soon as they come out of the oven, release the sides with a knife and flip it out of the pan. While still hot, cut the cookies with a pizza wheel. If you wait until they are cool, they won't cut nicely - they just break apart.

Cool completely. I have been making these cookies for a few years now and my, are these good! At Christmas time, you can omit the almond flavoring and use eggnog flavoring instead. Eggnog shortbread cookies taste wonderful! I would think that you could also replace the almond with lemon, orange or just about any other flavor your family likes.

When I first opened the can of Red Feather, I took a small taste. I will admit I was disappointed. To me, it really didn't taste like anything. You could tell that it wasn't fresh butter. However, the cookies came out perfect and tasted great! I will be purchasing another to replace this can. 

Believe me, Almond Shortbread Cookies won't last long!