shortbread | strawberryplum

Lemon Curd & Earl Grey Shortbread Tart

Invite me over for dinner and I’ll generously offer to bring dessert. I’ll pretend baking is a completely selfless act, something simply to show my appreciation and gratitude. Little do you know, I’m really just looking for a reason to try out a new concoction that fits my favorite ingredients neatly into a cake, pie, or tart and your dinner invitation was the green light go-ahead I’d been waiting for.

My latest “selfless act” of dessert was this tart I brought to Easter dinner. It’s an Earl Grey tea infused shortbread crust, filled with lemon curd, and topped with tangy whipped cream. It’s your afternoon tea with lemon and a side of cookies all rolled into one tart.

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Every December my mom turns into a Christmas baking machine. Everyday for a month she’s getting butter out to soften, firing up the oven, and cranking out cookies. There are peanut butter balls, fudge, jam turn-overs, bittersweet chocolate and coconut shortbread, cherry bars, buttery cut-outs, snowballs, thumbprint cookies, and on and on.

It’s pretty amazing. It’s also a ton of work, lots of trips to the baking aisle of the supermarket, plenty of yelling at cookie dough-snitching kids/dogs/husbands, a few miscellaneous melt-downs along the way.

There is another way though. An easy way. You can arrive at your holiday gatherings with a kaleidoscope of cookies without baking for a solid month.

It’s called a cookie exchange. Most people are probably familiar with the concept, but it came as a revelation to me. You gather up a few friends (preferably amazing bakers) and everyone makes a big batch of one type of cookie to share with the group. You end up with a beautiful assortment of goodies after only one day of cookie baking. Plus, if you’re not a blabber-mouthed food blogger, you can bring your beautiful tray to Christmas, pass them all off as your own, and really impress your family and friends.

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