Easter Egg Shortbread Cookies

Easter Egg Shortbread Cookies
Dorcas Annette Walker

The celebration of Easter majors on life as the earth all around us rejuvenates itself with new growth and blooms overnight despite fluctuating temperatures. No matter how one celebrates this holiday everything points to the creator of the universe whose power and majesty is above and beyond mankind’s ability to reproduce. Who else but God, by the tilting of the global sphere we live on, can turn barren ground and trees into beauty that dazzles the eye? Every tiny chick that hatches out of a hard egg shell is a testimony to the power of the resurrection. Our little farm is alive this spring with peeps and chirps of chicks in all sizes filling the chicken yard with downy bodies that soon turn into feathers along with quacking baby ducks. One becomes memorized watching these fascinating little fuzz balls grow into fat waddling hens along with the anticipation of having fresh eggs appear this fall.

Along with taking care of our livestock, every chance I get finds me burying seeds in the ground in my vegetable and flower garden between spring showers. Each tiny seed that I cover with dirt is an act of faith that in the days to come the dead seeds will sprout and produce living plants. I’ve also transplanted my trailing lima beans and squash in the garden along with some of the other flowers I had started. All that remains on my dining room table now is tomato plants looking rather lonely by themselves. Soon they too will get the chance to grow outside and once again I will reclaim my dining room for eating instead of using it as a green house.

I blame all the excitement of life and new growth around me that triggered off my brain cells into another wild culinary experiment of combining a picture I had torn of out a magazine awhile back that intrigued me with another recipe I discovered while browsing through some cookbooks to create something entirely new that I named my Easter Egg Shortbread Cookies. The Easter Egg Shortbread Cookies are fun to make and remind me of when I colored eggs and made candy for Easter with my children. My Easter Egg Shortbread Cookies are delicious plain or decorated and make ideal party favors or snacks. Preparation time for my Easter Egg Shortbread Cookies is around thirty-five minutes (not counting decorating time) and this recipe makes eighteen 3-inch cookies.

Easter Egg Shortbread Cookies

2 sticks butter melted
1 c sugar
¼ c milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp almond extract
3 c self-rising flour

Cream butter sugar, milk, and extracts together until smooth. Add flour and mix until crumbly. Take a handful of dough; form into an egg shape with your hands, and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350º for fifteen minutes until lightly browned. Let the cookies sit five minutes before moving and cool before decorating!

Frosting:

2 c powdered sugar
2 tb shortening
¼ c milk
½ tsp almond extract
food coloring
candy sprinkles

Beat sugar, shortening, milk, and extract until smooth with a Wisk adding more milk if needed to make a thin consistency. Add a drop of food coloring and mix until getting the desired color. Spoon the frosting over the cookies until covered and then sprinkle with candy.

Weekly tip: When covering candy or cookies with a thin icing place the items to be covered on a rack over a waxed cookie sheet for easy clean up. Let sit until the icing is completely hardened!

Dorcas Annette Walker is a published author, columnist, speaker, freelance magazine writer, and photographer from Jamestown, Tennessee. Contact her at: dorcasannettewalker@gmail.com For more recipes check out her Creative Tennessee Mountain Cookin blog at: www.dorcasannettewalker.webs.com