Here is my basic shortbread cookie recipe, as well as a few variations you can do in order to jazz up an offering or use the cookie as a spell. Cookies make fantastic vessels for spells -more so than most other desserts in my experience. They also make perfect offerings for your deities, and simplify whole-item offerings to Chthonic deities.
Preheat the oven to 350. Cream the butter and sugar together, then sift in the flour one cup at a time. Combine until smooth. On a baking sheet, put down a layer of parchment paper and lightly dust with flour. Drop appx 1.5 inch balls of dough on the cookie sheet roughly 2 inches apart. Bake 9-11 minutes (start at 9, add more if needed). Allow to cool before lifting them off the cookie sheet.
Preheat the oven to 350. Cream the butter and sugar together, then sift in the flour one cup at a time. Combine until smooth.
Cover the dough and refrigerate for at least one hour, or overnight.
On a flat surface, lightly sprinkle flour to coat. Also coat your hands and a rolling pin. Roll out the dough across the floured surface until 0.5 inch thick. Dip your cookie cutters into the flour and press firmly to cut.
On a baking sheet, put down a layer of parchment paper and lightly dust with flour. Bake 9-11 minutes (start at 9, add more if needed). Allow to cool before lifting them off the cookie sheet.
Tips & Tricks:
For buttery shortbread, use 3 cups of flour. For drier shortbread -or rolled shortbread- use 4 cups of flour. That’s how I like mine.
Parchment paper likes to roll up on you. When you cut off the amount you need, crumple it up into a ball, then smooth it back out. It won’t roll anymore. Trim the edges around the pan if they’re too big.
Shortbread is a lot like me - it doesn’t tan; it burns. Shortbread isn’t meant to be golden brown on top; it should be approximately the same white color as the dough. A little golden brown on the bottom is ok, but not too much.
Variations:
When adding ingredients to shortbread for flavor, you don’t need to add more butter unless you go overboard. I would highly recommend sticking with plain shortbread the first one or two times you make it so that you learn what the dough is like and you can gauge for yourself.
For Wealth: Add vanilla extract to the dough. When the cookie is baked and cooled, dip half of the cookie in melted dark chocolate
For Love: Add culinary grade rose and hibiscus petals
For Protection: Add just a pinch of cinnamon, black pepper, and lemon zest.
For Uplifting & Rejuvenating: Add lemon and/or orange zest
For Peace: Add culinary grade lavender petals (lavender is very strong and can easily overpower your
Wealth and Abundance offering to Hades, Persephone, and Demeter: Use saffron butter instead of regular butter. I make mine by crushing up saffron with my mortar, softening my butter, taking out a portion of it (like 0.25 cup) and melting that, then letting the crushed saffron infuse into the melted butter. When it is infused, cooled, and beginning to resolidify (about 30 minutes) I add that back to the softened butter, cream them together, then cream in the sugar.
Reverence Offering to Persephone: Add fresh pomegranate arils into the dough and refrigerate for an hour before baking. If you do this, mix the arils in by hand, not using a machine, to reduce how many of them break. You can amp this up by waiting for the cookies to cool then dipping them into dark chocolate and sprinkling more arils on top.
Sacrifice to Hestia and/or Demeter: Leave the cookies plain, but bake them into the shape of pigs, which are Hestia and Demeter’s primary sacrificial animal. You can do this with a cookie cutter, or do what I do and use a Piggy Pop pan. Do not do this for Aphrodite, who hates pigs.
