Chocolate Orange Shortbread Sticks

As far as I am concerned, you can’t have Christmas without shortbread. Lots and lots and lots of shortbread. When we were kids, my mother used to make huge batches of roll-out shortbread cookies for us to decorate. She’d buy all sorts of holiday sprinkles and just let us go to town, decorating the cookies in festive colors and patterns. As we got older, we were allowed to help roll the cookies and cut them out, so we were always on the lookout for fun new cookie cutter shapes. We’d end up with so many cookies she’d have to store them in the freezer. They would last until Easter.

Going sugar and grain-free, I thought that shortbread would be a thing of the past for me. Traditional shortbread relies on the holy trinity of conventional baking: sugar, flour, and butter. The resulting cookie is tender but also a little crisp, with a slightly sandy texture. Could I possibly recreate that successfully with almond flour and Swerve Sweetener?

Well, let’s just say I am having a lot of fun trying. I’ve made some pretty decent approximations of shortbread in the past, but this is my favorite so far. I cut in the butter with a pastry cutter just as one would with traditional shortbread, to get that sandy texture. And I used powdered Swerve for a finer, more cohesive consistency.

They certainly look the part of traditional shortbread and they tasted the part, too! A little orange zest and some dark chocolate, and these little cookies will be the hit of the holiday cookie tray.