I don’t love chain emails.

For this particular time in my life (two teens, an infant), the act of cutting and pasting a recipe that I have to actually type, sending it to a person I may not know, and then sending a new chain email to twenty friends (who will receive my impersonal email with a similar sense of loathing) just doesn’t seem to represent my festive holiday mood. So, I’ve decided to post a quick, easy recipe for all to use. Here is your get-out-of-writing a recipe for free card. Use it wisely and often!

This one’s simple, straightforward, and quick. Maybe it will someday pop into your inbox, and you can have a little chuckle over it.

Anytime Lemon Poppy Seed Ice Box Shortbread


2 ¼ cups unbleached, all purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

½ cup granulated white sugar (I use organic cane sugar)

½ cup confectioners’ sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

zest of one large lemon

juice of the same large lemon (or more, depending on your taste…)

  1. With a whisk, combine salt and flour in a medium bowl.

  2. In another bowl, beat sugars and butter together til fluffy and pale yellow. Add egg, vanilla, zest and lemon juice and mix in.

  3. Slowly add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix until combined. Your mixture should not be dry and crumbly. If it is, add an egg yolk. (save the white for an egg wash later on.)

  4. Dump out onto a piece of parchment or wax paper. Shape into a log the size of a standard rolling pin: about 1 1/2-2 inches in diameter. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

  5. Pull out and roll entire outside in poppy seeds (OPTIONAL!, these cookies taste just fine with out the poppies!)

  6. Refrigerate for two hours.

  7. Cut log into evenly spaced cookies about 1/4-1/2 inch thickness depending on how thick you like your shortbread.

  8. Re-refrigerate for 30 minutes or overnight, and then either freeze or bake as needed in a 350 degree oven for 10-20 minutes, or until golden brown around the edges.

  9. In an airtight container, cookies will keep for 1 week.

  10. ***To add extra flare, use a clean rubber stamp to impress an image into the dough prior to re-refrigeration and baking. Also, optional ingredient add-ins include almond paste or vanilla in substitution of the lemon juice and zest.

P.S. For those of you who may have missed me and my jovial posts, I have been knee-deep in taking care of my newest addition to the family, Gabriel Peter Steele. He’s almost 7 months now, and I am wildly attempting to set aside some time each week to write more. Thanks for your patience and I hope you look forward to hearing from me soon;)