No fruit but lemon, orange, apple, lime, and other plant flavors of mint, cocoa, ginger, maple and peanut, as well as the raisins?

Before I read the requirements, I was thinking tamarind. As in tamarind paste in the batter. Not dehydrated.

Classic almond shortbread or pecan sandies? Are nuts okay?

I haven't made these spiced molasses cookies yet but I think they qualify, though I was thinking of cutting down the sugar:

https://www.silkroaddiary.com/baharat-chewy-molasses-cookies/

A lot of my recipes are 1:3 sticks butter to cups flour, rather than 1:2, but I liked this one:

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5965684/i-invented-my-first-cookie#n=11

All the fruit flavors come from zest. The apples are dehydrated and pounded into powder. No fruit would be blueberries, raspberries, etc. I baked Chinese Almond cookies once, but nobody wanted them. I thought they were excellent.

Pecans, walnuts, almonds, are okay. We only have one friend who likes peanut butter cookies and she takes the whole batch of 4 dozen.

This recipe was from Cookie8, but I can't find it by search. Canned pumpkin seems more like peanut butter as an ingredient, rather than like berries, as fruit. Or is it a moisture thing?

Pumpkin Cookies from Cookie8

Ingredients

1 cup butter

2 cups flour

1/2 cup br. sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 tsp baking powder

1 egg 1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

Directions

- cream butter and sugar, add pumpkin, egg and vanilla

- add dry sifted ingredients

- drop on ungreased sheet

baked at 350 - 10-15 mins

(For completeness, the highly unnecessary Frosting: 3 tbsp butter 1/4 cup milk 1/2 cup br. sugar Frosting: - combine and bring to boil, remove from heat, add icing sugar to thicken to good spreading consistency (kind of runny, not too thick) and apply when cookies are cooled.)

My favorite shortbread cookies. I often double the recipe.

Scottish Shortbread

2 cups flour
2 T. cornstarch
Pinch salt
1/2 cup plus 2 T. powdered sugar
2 sticks salted butter, room temp. (Salted butter adds more flavor IMO.)
1/2 tsp. vanilla

First, remove 2 T. from the 2 cups of flour and replace with the 2 T. cornstarch. Mix salt with flour/cornstarch. Cream butter, sugar and vanilla. Add dry ingredients and mix until just blended. Form into ball and wrap in plastic. Chill for about 30 minutes to an hour. Preheat oven to 325. Roll dough out on lightly floured surface to about 1/4 to 1/2-inch thickness (your preference). Cut out shapes with about 1 1/2-inch cookie cutter. Place on parchment lined cookie sheet and bake about 20 minutes. Watch carefully; you want them to just barely get color (depending on your oven and thickness of cookies, you may need a little less or more time). Remove from oven, sprinkle with fine or granulated sugar (optional), let sit for about 10 minutes, and remove to rack to cool.

Note: I’ve also made these by pressing the dough into a round cake pan. Dock the dough to make pie-shaped pieces, then slice through the docking while warm from the oven. Let the triangular pieces cool/firm up before removing from pan.

Do you bake cookies as a business? Who are "cookie friends"?

Cookies are one thing that I just dont bake. Anything with that much fat and sugar is just not appealing, to me. Sure, it can be delicious, but way too rich to eat more than one! And, I can tell you taht no one taht I know needs to be eating cookies!!

The only ones I do are at the holiday season when we do hubs Italian grandmothers egg dough cookies. They get dressed with anisette icing and I use grated chocolate. Only for the holidays! My friend who is also of the Italian family bakes ricotta cookies that are wonderfully light and just the right light sweet. Both mine and hers are a basic egg dough, rather biscuit like. So many cookies are fat and sugar held together with flour and eggs. It makes me cringe. Although, I have a weakness for those packaged sandwich cookies. but I dont buy them. Dont like Oreos , though.

The second thing that I rarely , if ever, bake is pies. Again, the over the top butter and sugar is just too much.

I also thought of shortbreads. They can be made less sweet, more savory.

I've got a chunk of a chocolate bar and some gummies in my freezer a co-worker gave me at least 5 years ago. I keep meaning to offer them to house guests but always forget it exists.

I make the no-bake energy balls at holiday time...not sure how they make the gummies. I do like turkish delight with pistachio.

Ricky, I’m not sure the ingredient amounts would work, but these are pretty darn good IMO. Recipe comes from the Silver Palate. I tend to make these mostly during the holidays, but they’re good anytime. Also great for ice cream sandwiches.👍🏻

Molasses Cookies
(Makes about 24 large, flat cookies)

12 T. butter
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
1 3/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda

Preheat oven to 350.

Melt butter, add sugar and molasses, and mix thoroughly. Lightly beat egg and add to butter mixture; blend well.

Sift flour with spices, salt and baking soda, and add to first mixture; mix. Batter will be wet.

Lay a sheet of nonstick foil (I use Release) on a cookie sheet. Drop tablespoons of cookie batter on foil, leaving 3 inches between the cookies (they’ll spread during baking).

Bake until cookies start to darken, 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from oven while still soft. Let cool on the foil.

Note: The cookies bake up fairly soft/chewy. Bake them longer for crisper.

@chloebud - that recipe is almost identical to our Ginger Snap cookie.

Great!

Hi, I don't have a recipe in mind but an idea is to add a decadent pure chocolate cookie to the repertoire :)

Happy baking !

(Also, snickerdoodles - lots of cinnamon)

I don't see regular, vanilla chocolate chip?

What about thumbprints with a jammy or chocolate filling?

@carolb_w_fl_coastal_9/10 - Mint Vanilla Chip uses chocolate chips. Fillings are too much work. We bake 150 cookies at a time. Same goes for thumbprints.

It seems to me you need a strawberry cookie. I've never used fruit powder, but could you adapt the apple recipe to strawberry powder?

Then I thought you needed windmill cookies and found this well regarded recipe (no mold required):

https://www.food.com/recipe/windmill-cookies-92620

I have infused the shortbread recipe that Chloe posted. I tried many versions including the official Ted Lasso shortbread recipe but many of them are really flat tasting. Considering the current cultural references, a shortbread cookie bar fits the bill. Also, check out the new Crumbl cookie chain for flavor ideas. I love their cookies. I still think you should knock off one of the kitchen sink cookie recipes. Most of them have pretzels, chocolate, and caramel but I see now that Crumbl also adds potato chips. I need to try that one.

“…but many of them are really flat tasting.”

Joan, I know people who feel that way about most shortbread. For me, the vanilla and salted butter are key, along with the tender, ”sandy” texture of traditional shortbread. I sometimes add lemon zest that can be good. The recipe I posted (from many years ago) originally did not include vanilla and called for unsalted butter. It was very ”meh” IMO.

FWIW, I use Ina G’s shortbread recipe for tart crusts since it’s a little more stable and a bit less crumbly. I do use salted butter for it, too.

Okay, lots of good ideas. However, this one came to me in the middle of the night.

Question: What do you need for Key Lime Pie?

Answer: Well, Key limes for one, but could you ever eat a Key lime pie WITHOUT a graham cracker crust?

Baking tomorrow, without cannabutter for the first batch, Key Lime Pie Cookies using a homemade graham cracker cookie recipe and Nellie & Joe's Key Lime Juice with plenty of Key Lime zest. Fingers crossed that the cookies aren't too gooey.

Ricky, you mentioned ”gooey.” There’s a key lime filling?

I bought key lime scones from publix last week because they had white chocolate chips and they were green. 🤷‍♀💚 The taste was fair, would not buy that version again. It didn’t taste like natural citrus.

I have not tried making canna butter yet. I used the distillate and dosed it into the butter. The shortbread recipe was great because it was 325 degrees as needed. I found a cute cookie sheet from my days of working around the corner from Sur La Table. It made 24 shortbread coins, each 1.5 teaspoon, so a smaller dose option. I add more vanilla and I think I tried almond as well to give them more flavor.

This made really cute butter cookies.

Joan, that coin cookie sheet is adorable. I actually prefer my to make my shortbread cookies small-ish. Though not so small, years ago I started collecting molds like these for my shortbread from a company called Brown Bag. I think my favorite’s the pumpkin.

::Raising my hand in acknowledgement:: I'm the one. I do use salted butter (surely the unsalted is supposed to have salt added separately?) but don't care for vanilla in my shortbread! IMO, shortbread should taste toasty and a little salty and butter rich. So, any kind of flavored shortbread, like maple, orange, or pecan, is fine with me, but I just don't like plain shortbread with vanilla. And I do love vanilla. So, I'm the one...

My mom's Key lime pie was a family fave and she always used a pastry crust - which I prefer to graham crackers - and whipped cream on top. I'm thinking of making a cookie crust instead of graham crackers - using animal crackers - but I've actually never made a Key Lime pie that I can recall. I have her recipe.

I am currently awash in Key Limes from my little tree - 2 colanders full right now and more coming every day. I've given away a few pounds of them, and made cordial, but I can never use them all...

Been wracking my brain to think of other cookie recipes, but coming up empty. I know I personally would prefer chocolate chip without mint. Would raspberry flavor be good in a simple sugar cookie recipe? Chocolate/almond? I remember buying chocolate & THC coated almonds at a dispensary in CA that were really yummy - it was really hard to refrain from eating too much 😄

I've made a number of the the cookies from MarthaStewart.com and like the recipes there.

”(surely the unsalted is supposed to have salt added separately?)”

You’d think, right? I’ve seen recipes call for unsalted butter and no salt. Makes no sense at all to my tastebuds, although I know people who prefer it that way.

Interesting regarding your take on shortbread with vanilla. I can say the same about almond extract, but then I’m not fond of it, period. I can somewhat deal with a hint, but much more can be overpowering for me.

Agreed about the almond extract. I have a few recipes that require it as a background note, but in general, I use amaretto instead. Which makes me wonder...would I like plain shortbread made with vanilla bean rather than extract?

Re the salt, every commercially made shortbread I've had tastes salty to me! I wonder if the no-salt people either learned it from people with extreme no-salt diets, or, more likely, from the base form of a recipe which was supposed to have something salty in it, like canned salted nuts. My mother used to make savory stuffed pâte à choux puffs, which were meant to be fairly soft rather than crunchy. The filling usually had some kind of gravy, which would have been a disastrous mess to bite into if they were crisp. She'd give us the lumpy ones that wouldn't have filled (from the top!) nicely to eat. The eggy membranes between the bubbles--which were pulled out before filling, but kind of burn away when taken to croquembouche crisp--were especially delicious. I'm still not that fond of the sweet crunchy versions, with their smooshy cream fillings. So, I guess if you grow up with unsalted shortbread it seems nice to you. :)

When I was a kid there was a local company which made chocolate chip cookies which were available at one particular grocery store. We adored them. They were different! As an adult, I figured out the difference was that they were salty, well past the normal amount of salt. Salty like a lot of shortbread. I don't think salt free cookies are gong to be the next big thing...

Definitely agree regarding salt-free cookies! I guess you can’t dispute tastebuds, but salt-free can be fairly taste-free for me. I used to work with someone who loved to bake and often say she never added salt to baked goods. Most of is could tell when she would bring goodies to share.🥴

Maybe try the vanilla bean!

Y'all are going to make me go find my recipe for cut-out cookies. I eat them as is or sandwich with jam ... make whatever shapes I feel like. I'm not sure I've had anyone else make it, yet, though ... I've made it a few times, so it's repeatable, but that just means I can follow my own instructions. It has elements of shortbread, but not the thick crumbly type. I use half almond half vanilla for flavoring.

I used to be more ambitious about creating and adjusting baking recipes ... wonder what happened ... the only baking recipe I adjusted recently was half-error (good error) ... I was making a slight tweak to a macaron recipe and screwed up my scaling with great result, though those don't fit this topic's requirements at all, since they're a finicky (according to most) sandwich cookies with no butter.

plllog, look into vanilla bean paste ... it's a great ingredient and easy to use in place of extract.

I have vanilla bean paste. ;) I wouldn't put it in shortbread. I was thinking the floral notes of vanilla straight from the pod might make a profound ”this is a vanilla cookie” statement, rather than “somebody stuck vanilla in my cookie” flavor.

BB, hypothesis on why you don't create and adjust so much? Perhaps you've done it enough that you already know what works and is good, and skip right over the experiments to the end product?

Had to go dig up my recipe for shortbread cut-out cookies ... it's pretty similar to chloebud's but with less flour.

Cut-out Shortbread Cookies

1 ⅔ cups flour, plus some for rolling

2 rounded tbsp. cornstarch

½ cup powdered sugar

1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, room temperature

½ tsp. vanilla extract

½ tsp. almond extract

cold water, as necessary (1-2 tbsp.)

Preheat oven to 350⁰F.

Combine flour, cornstarch, and powdered sugar in a large bowl. Cut in butter. Stir mixture, so it starts to come together, add cold water a tablespoon at a time if it is too dry (it will be crumbly at this point). Add the extracts, and stir to incorporate.

As it starts to come together, it may be easier to work it with your hands as well as the spoon. (It helps to press the dough into the side of the bowl.) Flip the dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead until it forms a nice ball. If it is too dry, wet your hands to add moisture, but generally keep them dry/floured, or the dough will stick to your hands.

Set the ball of dough back in the bowl and refrigerate it for ten minutes.

Take the dough out, and place the ball on a well-floured surface. Roll it out to ⅛ inch thickness. Use cookie cutters to make the desired shapes, and collect excess to be rerolled. Repeat until you are out of dough. The size of the cookies will not make much difference in cooking, only the thickness.

Bake for about 9 minutes or until browning has just started on some of the cookies. Thinner cookies will cook faster; thicker cookies will take longer.

Take cookies off the cookie sheet onto a rack to cool. When cool, you can spread jam/preserves on them or just eat them plain!

Makes about four dozen 2 inch cookies.

I even found a picture of them from the when I first made them in 2013 ...

Outer ones are stacked ... so spread with apricot jam and then a second stacked on top ... that's optional. The middle one is just a single layer cookie ... yield should be based on single layer cookies. (And I absolutely cooked those little cut out pieces as ... well, I think the cookie cutter was technically mini club, but they look kind-of like Scooby Snax.)

Okay, it's not a traditional cookie, but how about a Madeleine?

My favorite madeleines are are Cheesecake Madeleines with Lingonberry Preserves from Barbara Feldman Morse's Madeleines cookbook. Except I never have lingonberry preserves, so I just sub blueberry or blackberry or strawberry or whatever.

I won’t buy the Madeleines from Costco because I eat the whole bucket. I love those little things.

Blueberry, I love your first photo of the Linzers! They’re one of my favorites to make. Always so pretty…kind of jewel-ish.

Also meant to mention I love how the shortbread dough is so easy to work with.

They're a linzer inspired shortbread cookie ... I used the shortbread-inspired recipe just above the picture to make the dough, rolled out thin, cut out a bunch of hearts (and some trees because it was Christmas time) then punched out the Scooby Snax from a little less than half of the hearts, and baked them all together. Then once they cooled, I spread apricot jam on full heart and topped them with the hearts with cuts outs. The trees I just left as is ... and a large number of the Scooby Snax didn't survive the cooling time.

I'm going to hi-jack this a bit, since there's already shortbread discussion here, but it's kind-of on topic, since it's still cookie recipe/idea discussion ...

I'm pondering making some shortbread cookies, but I'm going to avoid including almond extract, since ... well, nuts. I was considering doing maybe an orange or tea flavoring and maybe add some ginger bits ... thoughts?

Blueberry, I think any of those would work since shortbread is kind of a blank slate. I’m trying to think of what I’ve used. Pretty much just plain (but always with vanilla), lemon, lime or chocolate. You can check online for versions of the flavors you mentioned, or anything else that appeals.

I pulled out some of the cookie cutters I’ve used for Linzers. I’ve never used the cute little butter molds in the center of the round tin.

So I did two batches:

One with earl grey tea and one with cranberry-orange tea and ginger chips.

I decided to add the tea by just dumping the contents of a couple tea bags in. I looked at infusing it in the butter or making a concentrate or extract, and those all just seemed to take too much time or effort, and shortbread works just fine with bits of stuff in it. Tea from tea bags is already fine, so it was just a matter of snipping the bags open ... loose tea I would have had to grind first.

For the earl grey, I used two of the Bigelow teabags from the box that we had in the cabinet ... ingredients are just black tea and bergamot oil. I added the tea to the dry ingredients and made no other changes to the recipe. Tea flavor is mild, mostly picked up as a trailing flavor. I probably could have added one more teabag worth of tea, but Ikm pretty happy with these. Yield: Four dozen 2" flowers-shaped cookies.

For the others, I used two of the teabags from a Republic of Tea jar of Cranberry and Blood Orange black tea and about a 1/2 cup of King Arthur Flour brand ginger mini chips. The ginger was certainly the dominant in this combination, so it definitely could have had one more teabag emptiesd in; the ginger chips was a good amount of chips for the amount of dough. I added the tea to the dry ingredients, same as with the earl grey, and I added the ginger chips after I cut in the butter but before stirring to start bringing the crumbles together. I had to roll these out a bit thicker to accommodate the ginger chips, I rolled them to about 1/4 inch thick and baked them a few extra minutes (12-14 minutes.). Yield: 2.5 dozen 2" circle cookies.

Blueberry, that sounds like success! If you see this, I was looking through Ina Garten’s Go-To Dinners this morning and wondered if these might appeal.

https://www.purewow.com/recipes/ina-garten-cinnamon-spiced-shortbread

The cookies were absolutely a success:

We prefer the earl grey (thinner flowers), but the round ones with the ginger chips were the first to go of the ones I brought to work.

I'm not a bit cinnamon fan in anything other than cinnamon rolls, but I had been considering sorting out a recipe using granulated sugar rather than powdered, so in that aspect, that is an interesting recipe.

I think Ina uses granulated sugar for all her shortbread. My recipe uses powdered sugar that I prefer for cookies for texture. I use Ina’s recipe for tart crusts since it’s a little more stable.

I tend to agree with you about cinnamon, but I have family members who’d likely be happy with Ina’s cookies. Guess I should try them.

One of my absolute favorites is white chocolate chip and citron cookies.

Citron! Fresh citrons are really expensive, so I'm guessing dried?

Candied.

@foodonastump - how is the taste of a citron different from a lemon?

I can’r answer that. The only citron I’ve used is commercially candied, and the the only candied lemon peel I’ve used is homemade. The two are worlds apart, but then so is store bought candied orange peel, from that which I make myself.