Rosemary shortbread

This is a surprisingly tasty salty shortbread. It's a great cookie option for those — like Mako ­— that prefer savory to sweet. Fantastic with ice cream and olive oil. Try it!

Ingredients

• 2 cups all purpose
• 2/3 cups of sugar
• 2 sticks (1 cup) of butter. Butter should be cold. I used salted butter but recipes that I've seen call for unsalted.
• 1.5 tablespoon (or more) dried rosemary. Maybe use less if you use fresh rosemary?
• 1 teaspoon of salt. A pinch or two more more, perhaps, if you use unsalted butter.
• 1-2 teaspoons of honey. If you have rosemary simple syrup or rosemary honey that'd probably be pretty great too!

Instructions

1. Preheat an over to 325°F and grease a pan well (I just used butter). I used a roughly 9in square Pyrex baking pan. The size can vary but the thickness will affect the time it takes to cook.
2. Mix everything dry (i.e. everything except the butter and honey, if you're using it) in your food processor with normal blades and run until the rosemary is all finely chopped up. If you don't have a a food processor, chop the rosemary finely first (ideally as fine as you can cut them) and then substitute a pastry cutter for the rest. I did it with a potato masher once in a pinch too. It worked but it was a real pain.
3. Chop the cold butter into 1 inch cubes or smaller. Add it, plus honey if you're using it, into the food processor. Run until everything is in fine crumbs/clumps. It's not long (perhaps 30 seconds, possibly less). You'll want to run/pulse it until the crumbs start to come together. Don't overprocess it until it's smooth and consistent. It should be crumbly.
4. Pack the dough well into the greased pan with your hands. It's ok if you leave finger prints and such but it should pretty smooth.
5. Cook until it's golden brown. With a 9 inch pan, it took me about 40 minutes. With a smaller/thicker pan, it might be more.
6. Once golden brown, take it out of the oven and flip it onto a cooling rack. If it's greased well, it should just fall out. I've had it completely fall apart. As long as it's still hot, you can press any broken pieces back together with a spatula and it will harden together as it dries. No problem!
7. After 15 minutes or so — once the shortbread is warm but still soft ­— cut it into pieces. Once it dries completely, it's going to be too crumbly to cut effectively.

Reports are that brushing olive oil on after taking it out of the oven are great too!

Inspiration + References

• NYT Rosemary shortbread recipe