Speckled Egg Easter Shortbread Cookies

Robin egg speckled iced shortbread cookies.

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Speckled Egg Easter Shortbread Cookies

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!

Prep Time15

Cook Time10

Chill30

Total Time1

Course: Baked Goods, cookies, Dessert

Cuisine: American

Servings: (this will vary)

Author: Lorie Yarro

Equipment

egg shape cookie cutter

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

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.

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.

Nutrition