Chocolate Dipped Pecan Shortbread Cookies – buttery and crumbly, these cookies are easy to make and easy to decorate. Just dip them in melted chocolate and then dip them again in pecan crumbs. Beautiful holiday cookies.
You might have noticed that I’ve been on a cookie marathon this month, posting 9 holiday cookie recipes in the month of December alone! Today’s beautiful chocolate dipped pecan shortbread cookies might be my very last (10th!) Christmas recipe this season.
This is one of the best shortbread recipes I’ve encountered, and I am definitely adding it to my Christmas cookie collection. Also, consider adding these holiday shortbread cookies to your Christmas cookie tray as well:
- Hazelnut Shortbread Cookies
- Pecan Shortbread Cookies
- Almond Shortbread Cookies with Amaretto
- Chocolate Covered Hazelnut Shortbread Cookies
- Almond Crescent Cookies
- Cranberry Noels
Tips for making perfect shortbread cookies
A couple of tips on how to make sure the shortbread cookies come out the way they are meant to be:
- For shortbread cookies, it’s very important to measure the flour correctly. Don’t pack flour into a measuring cup. Instead, fluff it up, scoop it into a measuring cup or sift it. If you don’t, you might end up with an overly crumbly cookie dough.
- Remember that it’s a shortbread dough, so it’s supposed to be reasonably crumbly but not so crumbly that it’s impossible for you to roll it. You should be able to easily roll the dough into logs. Then, chilling these cookie dough logs in the freezer/refrigerator before slicing makes the job of slicing the cookies much easier!
- Use serrated knife to slice the cookie logs to help avoid crumbling the cookie dough.
- Before putting the cookies in the oven, make sure the oven is preheated to the right temperature.
- Do not bake the cookies for too long – every oven is different, and your oven might bake these cookies faster than mine. Don’t let your cookies get brown – a little brown around the bottom edges is OK. If they are baked just right, they are light and so tasty. Let them cool on a baking sheet for a couple of minutes, then transfer cookies onto a wire rack to continue cooling.
These holiday Pecan Shortbread Cookies are buttery and crumbly and so easy to make. To decorate, just dip the cookies in melted chocolate and then dip them again in pecan crumbs. Perfect addition to your Christmas cookie tray.
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 4 oz unsalted butter , room temperature
- 1/3 cup white sugar
- 1/2 cup pecans , toasted, finely ground
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 4 ounces dark chocolate , high-quality, such as Lindt, chopped
- 1/3 cup pecans , toasted
Toast pecans at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 5 minutes. Watch carefully to make sure they don’t burn – they burn easily. Cool them off completely.
To make finely ground nuts, place toasted pecans into food processor and process until finely ground.
- In a large mixing bowl, beat butter, sugar until creamy. Add vanilla and continue beating. Add 1/2 cup finely ground pecans and beat to combine. In a separate bowl, combine flour and salt, then add mixed flour and salt to the creamy butter-sugar mixture. Do not overmix, just enough to combine all ingredients and form a cookie dough.
- Shape dough into 4 logs of different thickness (to make cookies of different radius – large and small). Wrap each log in plastic wrap and put wrapped cookie dough in the freezer for 30 minutes, then in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 325 F.
After cookie dough has been in the freezer and in the refrigerator, unwrap plastic and slice each log into thin cookie slices.
Place cookie slices on parchment-lined ungreased baking sheet, spacing 1 inch apart.
Bake for about 15 minutes, don’t let the cookies get brown. After about 15 minutes of baking, let cookies cool for a couple of minutes on the baking sheet, then transfer cookies to wire rack to cool completely.
Melt chocolate in a small skillet over medium heat, just until chocolate melts, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat.
Using spatula, brush half of the cookie on one side only (no chocolate on the bottom of the cookie) and along the cookie side. Dip the chocolate side of the cookie into coarsely chopped pecans. Return to rack.
If you like, you can leave some cookies just covered with chocolate, without pecan crumbs. You can also leave some cookies just plain (no chocolate, no pecans on top of chocolate).
Repeat with remaining cookies.
Let cookies dry on rack for at least 1 hour, for chocolate to harden.
The recipe is adapted from Epicurious
I made several batches of these. First, there is no way you would get 3 log rolls off this one recipe. I tripled the ingredients to make 3 logs and they are still small cookies but probably like the picture. The cookies are easy enough to make but painting on the chocolate is very time consuming especially since I was making a lot of batches as Christmas gifts. I think you could just dip the top in the chocolate which I did try. I tripled the base recipe three times to make 9 log rolls to slice up. They are pretty cookies but they have no flavor. I know they are shortbread but I don’t taste anything when eating them. Only the chocolate if you eat that part. Other than that they have no flavor and i followed recipe exactly. Sorry but it’s like eating cardboard. No taste for a shortbread cookie. These did not make next years list.
Julia,
These look amazing and I’m really liking the tips you included here. Making these this weekend. Great images again.
Kevin