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These buttery delicious speckled egg Easter shortbread cookies are not the perfect, must make spring cookie recipe! These are sure to be a hit this spring with a simple, 6-ingredient cookie dough that technically can be made without chilling (if you are ok with slight spread) but the real winner it the beautiful icing with little brown speckles to resemble robin’s eggs. These aren’t just cute to look at, they are delicious too!
Manifesting all things spring with these ADORABLE speckled robin egg shortbread cookies. Light and buttery cookies with a sweet blue icing and little speckles to look just like a real egg! Perfect for Easter, spring and more!
I was so inspired by the concept that Crowded Kitchen used to make these Peanut Butter Easter Eggs and just had to have them in cookie form. And that is what these adorable egg cookies are for sure!
Looking for other Easter treats? Try these favorites: Mini Egg Cheesecake Cookie Bars, Easy Carrot Cake From Cake Mix, Key Lime Cookies, Blueberry Lemon Coffee Cake or these Lemon Sugar Cookies!
Why We Love These Speckled Easter Shortbread Cookies
When it comes to adorable holiday treats, I don’t consider myself the best, but these speckled egg shortbread cookies are literally my new favorite thing.
I was so excited to see how perfect they looked on a tray with some Easter candies and some Easter basket grass–these are going to be a must every year now!
These Easter egg shortbread cookies:
- are so quick and simple to prep
- actually look AND taste amazing–that’s not always the case
- are freezer friendly
- also are very very kid friendly (sorry for future messes from the speckles, ha!)
- have a rich buttery flavor and light melt in your mouth texture–a shortbread cookie must!
Ingredient Notes
- For the very best buttery shortbread cookies, use a high quality European butter. While this cookie recipe can still work with another butter, a higher quality like Plugrá or Kerrygold. European butters will have a higher fat content and will bring about richer buttery flavor and a much better overall texture. When it comes to shortbread, butter is the forefront of the cookie flavor so choose the best you have available!
- Cornstarch will help make these shortbread cookies have that nice light, melt in your mouth texture, so definitely a must for these cookies!
- You can use food coloring as you desire here. I found the Chefmaster pastels food coloring to work really well, but any combination of blue with just a slight hint of green is great!
Ways To Vary This Recipe
- add a pop of citrus: you can add in some lemon zest when adding the dry ingredients for a lemon flavored cookie
- vary the egg colors: go for all your favorite pastels and more when it comes to the colors of your icing
- use almond extract in the cookies--I went back and forth on this and ended up adding it just the icing, but feel free to add 1/2 teaspoon to the cookie dough!
Step-By-Step Instructions
Step 1: Whisk together the flour, cornstarch and salt. Set aside
Step 2: Using an electric mixer, beat the softened butter and powdered sugar to cream until nice and smooth. Add the vanilla and beat to combine.
Step 3: Slowly add the dry ingredients into the wet and beat just until combined.
Step 4: Dough may be somewhat crumbly but not dry and should pull together to form a nice ball of dough.
Step 5: Once chilled (see full recipe below for chilling suggestions), roll into ¼ to ½ inch thickness—the ½ inch makes for the softer, more melt in your mouth cookie and the thinner will be more of a crisp cookie that will snap in half.
Step 6: Press egg cookie cutter to form the cookies and line a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Bake in oven preheated to 350° for about 8-12 minutes—based on thickness and how long chilled, the time will vary.
Step 7: I remove them as soon as a very slight golden color starts to show around the base edge of the cookies. Err on the side of under baking. If you have any rough edges, you can use a slightly larger egg shape cookie cutter to sort of scoot/shuffle each cookie around a bit to make nice clean edges.
Step 8: Once cooled, whisk the icing ingredients together and adjust to desired thickness. I add 3 drops arctic blue and 2 drops apple green (from chefmaster pastels food coloring)—just a nice light blue-ish with a light touch of green is great but you can aim for any color you like really! Dip the top of each cookie into the icing and allow excess icing to fall off or spread with an offset spatula.
Step 7: Stir the cocoa powder with the water and then use a pastry brush and lightly tap it over the iced cookies to make speckles.
Step 8: Allow to cool and set for several hours to allow to fully set.
Recipe Tips
When making the cocoa powder speckles, know it can be a touch messy. You can put a pice of parchment paper or two below the wire rack to catch some of the mess!
Make any color eggs you like! I tried to make a bit of a teal-blue color, but you can use any pastel color, or another that you like. You can make these multi-colored even!
The number of cookies you get from this recipe will vary. If you roll out to 1/2 inch thickness, you will get closer to 15-16 cookies. If you roll closer to 1/4 inch thickness, you will get 20 or so cookies.
Storage
Store iced cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4-5 days at room temperature. If layering the cookies in a container, put parchment paper between layers and make sure the icing is set before stacking.
To freeze, lay in a single layer on a sheet pan and allow to flash freeze for about an hour and then transfer to a sealed container and layer with parchment between each stack. Freeze for about 3 months. Thaw at room temperature before eating.
Freezing cookie dough: you can freeze the cookie dough as well for about 3 months. Roll out into the disks and double wrap them with plastic wrap and then freeze. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator.
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Speckled Egg Easter Shortbread Cookies
Equipment
Ingredients
Cookies:
- 2 cups flour, (250 g)
- 3 Tbsp cornstarch, (30 g)
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 cup high quality unsalted butter (226 g), 2 sticks, softened
- ¾ cup powdered sugar , (100g)
- 1 ½ – 2 tsp vanilla extract
Icing
- 1 ½ cups powdered sugar
- 4-5 Tbsp half and half or whole milk
- ½ tsp almond extract
Speckles
- ½ tsp cocoa powder
- 2-3 tsp water
Instructions
- Whisk together the flour, cornstarch and salt. Set aside
- Using an electric mixer, beat the softened butter and powdered sugar to cream until nice and smooth. Add the vanilla and beat to combine.
- Slowly add the dry ingredients into the wet and beat just until combined. Dough may be somewhat crumbly but not dry and should pull together to form a nice ball of dough.
- This can technically be rolled into cookies and baked without chilling, but there will be a touch of spread. My suggestion is form two discs and chill for about 30 minutes at least, or up to about 2 hours for the really nice, no spread look. If chilling more than 2 hours, you can roll out into about ¼ inch to ½ inch thickness and chill between layers of parchment.
- Once chilled, on a lightly floured surface, roll into ¼ to ½ inch thickness—the ½ inch makes for the soft, more melt in your mouth cookie and the thinner will be more of a crisp cookie that will snap in half.
- Press egg cookie cutter to form the cookies and line a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake in oven preheated to 350° for about 8-12 minutes—based on thickness and how long chilled, the time will vary. I remove them as soon as a very slight golden color starts to show around the base edge of the cookies. Err on the side of under baking.
- Allow the cookies to cool for several minutes and then transfer to cooling rack.
- Once cooled, whisk the icing ingredients together and adjust to desired thickness. I add 3 drops arctic blue and 2 drops apple green (from chefmaster pastels food coloring)—just a nice light blue-ish with a light touch of green is great but you can aim for any color you like really!
- Dip the top of each cookie into the icing and allow excess icing to fall off or spread with an offset spatula.
- Stir the cocoa powder with the water and then use a pastry brush and lightly tap it over the iced cookies to make speckles. Allow to cool and set for several hours to allow to fully set.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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