Chocolate lovers, this one’s for you! Cookied out from the holidays? Not me! You can start that diet tomorrow.

I like simple ingredients that turn out to be something wonderful – like these chocolate shortbread cookies. They’ve got a total of 4 ingredients, yes just four. And the taste? Well, I’ll leave that for you to decide. As far as I’m concerned, they are yum to the tenth power.

Chocolate Shortbread Cookie Recipe

Ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

Notes

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
With an electric mixer, beat butter until creamy.
Add flour, sugar, and cocoa; mix just until combined. (Chill dough in the refrigerator 10 minutes if it is too soft to handle.)
Pat dough into an 8-inch round cake pan; press edges down with the tines of a floured fork.
Bake until firm, 30 minutes.
Immediately score into eight wedges; cool completely.
Turn out of pan; break wedges apart. Decorate with icing if you please!

As a shortbread fan, I knew adding chocolate would be the pièce de ré·sis·tance! If you are looking for a sweet cookie, this one is not for you. The sugar dances gingerly in this cookie. It’s present, but not over the top. It’s more about the chocolate.

That punch of chocolate flavor is your first experience when biting into this cookie. And that’s exactly what I was after. Rich and chocolatey, it comforts and soothes the palate with its buttery goodness.

These chocolate shortbreads are a cookie, yet they aren’t. They are a cookie-cake-ish kinda thing. No, they are not brownies and to me, don’t taste anything like a brownie really. OK, so here we go!

Cream your butter!