Rum Raisin Shortbread (Pg 134)

So this is the 17th recipe I've made and so far there have been a few recipes that I wasn't entirely pleased with, but none of the recipes have actually failed.

There's a first time for everything.

As we all know, I love baking with rum and I had really been looking forward to making these shortbread cookies. I just love rum soaked raisins. I have a really good recipe for Rum Raisin Cupcakes and I made them for Thanksgiving last year. I am somewhat ashamed and somewhat amused to say that my 90 year old Grandmother got a little bit drunk from them; the frosting was just buttercream with rum. Delicious.

Anyway, onto the shortbread. I have no idea what went wrong. My friend Sarah was baking me with again and we were going along smoothly as usual, and after we mixed up the dough we had to shape it into logs. We realized something was wrong at this point, we just weren't sure what was wrong or what to do about it, but the dough was obviously too wet. Something must have been mis-calculated, mis-communicated, mis-measured, something along the way. Sarah and I are both very precise in our measurements, but this was just off.

Knowing it was too wet, we shaped it into lumpy logs and shoved it into paper towel tubes and refrigerated it and hoped for the best. But when I tried to slice it it was still pretty mushy and the knife just kinda crushed it into lumpy...blobs. Mushy lumpy blobs. It's especially weird because it's supposed to be shortbread, which is typically very dry. Again, I just hoped for the best and threw them in the oven. You can see how they came out.

They were burnt around the edges and still kinda under-baked in the centers and when I tried to remove them from the cookie sheet they just crumbled. It was all very sad.

The really really really sad part is that they taste amazing. Did I mention that there are rum soaked raisins in them? And did I mention that there's shredded coconut? And did I mention that there's orange zest? And all these things combined are really yummy. It's just really too bad there's not much of an actual cookie here. But I couldn't possibly throw this away. I figured there are a few options for it:

1) Cereal. Here it is in a bowl. Just add milk.

2) Ice cream topping.

3) Yogurt topping.

4) Just eat the crumbly mess with a spoon. It's good.

I will try these again sometime because I'm sure something went wrong and I really want them to work out. They're so delicious.

Yield:
Recipe predicted: 4.5 dozen.
Actual: One giant, crumbly mess.

17 recipes down, 158 to go.