Day 6 of the Cookie Countdown: Disconcerting Lemon Shortbread

My friend Carrie is what I would call a daring cook. I look at a recipe and scoff at the strange combination of flavors; she scans the same list of ingredients, pulls out her pots and pans, and gets cooking. I want to know it’s all going to work out okay; she’s willing to take the risk that it won’t for that slight possibility that it just might be the most amazing dish she’s ever tasted. She sees the diamond in the rough; I see a waste of time.

Though I would love to be more adventurous in my cooking exploits, the benefit of having a friend like Carrie is that I get to taste the fruit of her experiments. Today’s recipe is one of them. When she told me about the recipe, I shrugged it off: “That’s not the kind of flavors I could get excited about,” I told myself.

And then she served this shortbread at her house one day and I couldn’t hold a single coherent conversation with anyone the rest of the afternoon because my mind kept wandering to the lemony, buttery flavor lingering in my mouth after every bite. It was disconcerting, but in a really good way.

The recipe, from Fine Cooking, is Lemon Cornmeal Shortbread. Sounds simple, right? Kind of unexciting, right? Wrong. Oh, so very wrong, my friends. I simply urge you now to go to this link and open your cupboard doors because shortbread needs to be on your menu tonight!