Hello sweet friends!
Last week my kids and I were chatting about how totally cool it would be to have our very own leprechaun. Molly said she wanted a leprechaun to help play pranks, and to eat snacks with she and her friends. I, on the other hand think that teaching a leprechaun to fold laundry and check math homework would be quite fantastic. 😉 So in hopes of fetching our very own family leprechaun, we baked our own shortbread leprechaun traps just in time for Saint Patrick’s Day.
SHORTBREAD COOKIE TRAPS:
For the walls and roof of the leprechaun traps, we baked the easiest-ever shortbread cookies. If you are short on time, (pardon the pun) shortbread cookies are absolutely perfect for you. The dough is made up of four basic ingredients, and is even easier to work with than store bought dough. Yep, that’s right. This dough is easier to work with than pre-made dough.
For the decorations on each cookie, we used our go-to royal icing recipe, as well as sprinkles, gum drops, jelly beans, and gummies. We basically tried to use our toppings as leprechaun bait, and what leprechaun doesn’t love jelly beans, gummies and sprinkles, right?
To hold the walls of the leprechaun traps together, we just spread a little bit of royal icing on the edge of two cookies and held them together until they stuck. Easy peasy.
How to make easy and delicious shortbread cookies.
- 1 cup (softened) butter
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 3/4 cup confectioner's sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
-
In a stand mixer, combine all of the ingredients. Blend on a high speed for about five minutes. It will seem as though the mixture will never come together, but just wait, the ingredients will eventually blend into perfect cookie dough.
-
Knead cookie dough and roll out onto a floured surface. Cut desired shapes and place on a parchment paper-covered cookie sheet.
-
Bake for 8-10 minutes or until slightly brown at the edges. Let cook land decorate with royal icing or any other desired toppings.
A NEW SNEAKY FAMILY TRADITION HAS BEGUN:
Creating these shortbread cookie “traps” was fun and so much easier than I ever imagined. In fact, we liked this recipe so much that we have started a new tradition. A Saint Patrick’s Day tradition that we hope your kids will love just as much.
The night before Saint Patrick’s Day, the kids are going to set up their traps on the kitchen counter. While confident that they are going to catch a new little friend, the great news here is that juuussstt in case they don’t, they can eat their sweet little traps on St. Patrick’s Day morning. A happy ending, either way.
We hope find this recipe to be quite a treasure, and are lucky enough to catch your very own leprechaun later this week!
Leave a Reply