Add a little “pep” to your step this holiday and Christmas season: Vegan Peppermint Shortbread!
Shortbread is simply one of those things I cannot resist.
It’s cakey. It’s crusty. It’s crumbly. It’s buttery. It’s sweet, but it’s salty.
It’s really just the best thing on earth!
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve consumed many a sleeve of Trefoils Girl Scout Cookies and boxes of Walker’s Shortbread (THE CREAM OF THE CROP) in my lifetime.
But, there’s just something special about homemade, right?
Ted Lasso knows.
A little history lesson:
For 350 years, candy canes have been a special part of Christmas celebrations. Originally available only in white, the classic stripes were added around 1900. Today, candy canes are available in a wide range of colors and flavors.
Legend has it that in 1670, the choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany gave his young singers sugar sticks to keep them quiet during the long Living Creche ceremony. In honor of the shepherds featured in the story, he bent the candies into small shepherds’ crooks. The German tradition was continued in the United States by a German-Swedish immigrant named August Imgard, who celebrated Christmas in Wooster, Ohio, by decorating a small blue spruce with paper ornaments and candy canes in 1847. The tradition began to spread, and around the turn of the century, red and white stripes and peppermint flavors became the norm.
In the 1920s, a man named Bob McCormack began making candy canes as special Christmas treats for his children, friends and local shopkeepers in Albany, Georgia. Bob’s Candies, as his business came to be known, distributed locally. But pulling, twisting, cutting and bending the candy canes by hand was a laborious process, so in the 1950s, Bob’s brother-in-law, Gregory Keller, a Catholic priest, invented a machine to automate candy cane production. Packaging innovations by the future generations of McCormacks made it possible to transport the delicate canes to communities across the country, and Bob McCormack’s candy canes became a nationwide holiday treat.
Always a Treat!
“The flavor of mint can cut through the richer flavors associated with food eaten during the holiday season. It’s a palette cleanser of sorts. Mint leaves behind a cool sensation in the mouth and, as Christmas is associated with snow and ice, this seems to make sense as the flavor of snow.“
Vegan Peppermint Shortbread
1 cup plant based, vegan butter (or regular), melted and cooled
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. sea salt
3/4 cup peppermint candy pieces, broken
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
Mix together the melted and cooled butter, flour, sugar, baking powder, vanilla extract, and sea salt. Stir well until a somewhat stiff dough forms.
Press flat into a parchment lined baking dish, smoothing all surfaces.
Chill for 30 minutes.
Bake for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown.
Sprinkle with the peppermint candy and bake an additional 2-4 minutes.
Cool before slicing and serving.
Feel free to dust with powdered sugar before slicing and serving for a little “snow and ice” effect.
