Maple Sugar Shortbread

This has been a winter for rearranging furniture hasn't it?

  I am continually amazed how I can go from wanting a new house

 to loving the one I'm in just by turning a table.

That's exactly what happened last week after I had to mop up a bit of ceiling collapse

 from an ice dam on the roof.

I turned the keeping table in the kitchen and wondered out loud for an hour 

why I had it the other way in the first place

I'm still tickled with it!

With the wine bar on hiatus until late April 

I am hoping to catch up on some other projects

( I must admit, I miss the wonderful warmth and energy of those wine bars

and look forward to them resuming)

But, I finished the baby quilt I started for my bartender extraordinaire

and had the lovely pleasure of presenting it to her today

It is made of many special bits and pieces of my quilting journeys

and feels like it echoes love and growth from the center of a loving home,

much like the space I feel this baby will be born into. 

Exciting.

The recent Pop Up Fabric Shop with Alewives Fabric 

and Rhea's Lucy Boston workshop were a wonderful success and filled Lily's

with vibrant color and creativity

 Born from the this lovely weekend

 was my development of 

a maple sugar shortbread cookie

 that I served for dessert on that Saturday

It is so good I just have to share the recipe.

It's gluten free, no refined sugar and delicious with frozen strawberry yogurt, 

but I think I'll dip the next batch into melted chocolate

Yum!

Turn that oven on and warm that kitchen up

Spring is coming, I promise!

Enjoy,

Kyra

MAPLE SUGAR SHORTBREAD

3 ounces best quality unsalted butter

Seeds scraped from one vanilla bean

1/4 cup pure maple sugar

1 cup rice flour

(I use Anson Mills, its phenomenal)

3 ounces ground almonds

 (if you have time to roast them first, even better!)

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

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Place the flour, ground nuts, salt, maple sugar and vanilla bean

in the bowl of a food processor, process to combine

Cut butter into small chunks and add to processor

Process until butter is cut into the flour mixture

and a "short" dough appears.

This will be very crumbly, especially if your butter is cold.

That's fine.

Press the mixture into a parchment lined or buttered 

8x8 baking pan

Score lightly into 9 squares and poke each square with the tines of a fork

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes

or until golden brown.

~

Allow to cool, cut apart and enjoy!