Chocolate Chip Shortbread Cookies

One of my mother's favorite treats when I was a child was a good shortbread biscuit or cookie. I've spent years looking for the perfect shortbread cookies and have come up with a few that are now in my standards cookbook. This is one of those. Made with real butter and mini-chocolate chips, this simple, crumbly cookie is more addictive than I ever realized. A hit with the folks in my office as well as my mom, there is never a shortage of folks who will take a batch when I make them.

These keep very well for several days in an airtight container so making a few batches at a time is no problem. 

I make these with an electric mixer and you really need to do it that way. You can mix this by hand but the lack of wet ingredients can make it a bit labor intensive without a mixer. I use my small hand mixer and it works a treat.

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/2 cup corn starch

1 mini-chocolate chips (I either use milk chocolate or dark chocolate, both are wonderful)

1 1/2 cup flour

Beat butter and powdered sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy

Sift flour and corn starch together and add gradually to butter mixture

Once that is combined, stir mini-chips in by hand

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto lightly greased cookie sheet

Bake 20 minutes at 330 degrees until bottoms are light golden brown

Remove to cook on parchment or waxed paper before putting in an airtight container for storing

Do not over cook these, once the bottoms are golden brown, they are done. The finished cookies will not be much darker than the raw dough when done so it may seem that they need more time. 

Other chips could be used in place of the chocolate, but the mini size works best for this recipe. The normal size chips just seem to be a bit big.