Canada Cornstarch Shortbread with Chocolate

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(about 16 cookies)

The very first time I made shortbread it was from a recipe off the back of a Canada Cornstarch Box. This is one of the best recipes I have ever come across. It produces a rich, buttery shortbread which melts in your mouth.

Occasionally, I'll wrap the shortbread around pieces of chocolate for a delightful, but decadent treat.

adapted from Canada Cornstarch
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/8 tsp fine sea salt
3/4 cup unbleached flour
1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup unsalted butter (1 1/2sticks), cut up
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 oz baking chocolate bar, broken into 16 pieces*


Place the cornstarch, icing sugar, salt and flour into the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times to combine.  Add the butter and sprinkle the vanilla extract evenly over the top. Run the motor until a soft dough begins to form.

Preheat oven to 300°F.

Divide the dough into 16 equal pieces. Encase a piece of chocolate inside each piece of dough.

Place the cookies about an inch (or more) apart of an ungreased cookie sheet. Come hell or high water, I was determined to get all of these cookies onto my small baking sheet for my counter top oven. This shortbread will spread a bit as you can see from my photo. Bake for about 25-35  minutes or until the edges begin to brown.

Remove from oven and cool on baking sheet for a minute or two, then remove shortbread onto a wire rack.

*I have always used baking chocolate for this, so I have no idea how regular chocolate might behave, but I would probably give that a try if that's all I had on hand. I like using milk chocolate for this, but all I had was bittersweet which turned out rather nice.