Salon des Metiers d’Arts of Montreal Haul!

Winter is here! Christmas is right around the corner. What does this mean? Gift shopping and every year for the last few years, I would go with friends to check out the Salon des Metiers d’Arts de Montreal. In translation, it is the Montreal Arts and Crafts Show.

This show has free entrance and especially for the food and wine vendors, there are free tastings. Another addition is that it focuses on smaller Quebec vendors (at least nearby). It is a great place to see what is new on the market and learn about the new products.

Usually, I go to these shows and pick up ice ciders or ice wines but this year, somehow I had a change of heart and focused on other things. Maybe its because we went to the Magog event: Festival des Vendanges (post HERE). Lets check it out! 🙂

Timothee Tartinier Gourmand

I actually picked up two items from this place. The other one I split with my friend and I forgot to take it back which is a roasted hazelnut spread. This one up there is gourmet popcorn with flavors of chocolate, vanilla and caramel. It was my husband’s gift for all the hard work and long hours he’s had to endure the last few weeks. He tasted it and loved it. You can check out this place HERE.

Ferme Guy Rivest

Have you ever tasted fruit pearls? I haven’t. I’ve seen them before and they look cool. I just never figured out how it would work with what we eat and didn’t see the need for it. This year, I wanted to try something new and these ladies looked nice so I went over to try it out. The passion they have for these products are fantastic. Ferme Guy Rivest sells five flavors (I believe): strawberry, raspberry, apple, blueberry and cranberry. If I’m missing well, you can always go check out their site HERE. I ended up getting the raspberry. They suggested to use it either as a topping on appetizers like cracker and cheese (which was their display product) or its good to put inside champagne or wine which is what I intend on doing.

i-Sens

A  new vendor at the show (I think) is this gourmet maple syrup/fruit pearls/organic tea place called iSens. The owner is chef and world traveller Philippe Morin and the maple syrup, from what he tells me is sold internationally. I bought this vanilla flavored maple syrup but also tried their Yuzu flavor and Ginseng one as well. While those latter two were pretty good, I just couldn’t decide who I could give it to that would appreciate it the same way and how to use it. However, Vanilla is also quite gourmet and there was no hesitation in getting it. It seems good to make desserts or pancakes. You can check out iSens and their products, including the fruit pearls which have mango and passion fruit flavors HERE.

La Nougaterie

I buy from La Nougaterie every year. They make delicious soft nougat. My absolute fave is Christmas Nougat which they didn’t have last year so I made it point to get it this year. Its great to cut up into pieces and serve at parties. My husband likes the honey and almond and chocolate ones so I get those for him. I’m thinking of giving away the Lavender as a little gift. Lavender is a tricky ingredient to use but they actually retain a good balance, floral but never overpowering. We also went to their shop at Ile d’Orleans a year or two ago. You can check it out HERE. Did I mention that they expanded their line quite a bit with meringue and candies and my absolute fave, marshmallows!

Coach House Shortbread Company

Also, a recent addition to annual buys which works so cute as gifts. I believe in giving food as gifts a lot because its absolutely great to have and its something to share with everyone especially as a general gift. While they come in salty flavors with cheese and herbs in four different varieties, I always go for these sweet ones. I usually would get sugar plum since its so festive but this year, I changed that up for Lavender and the other two flavors are Ginger (which is for myself) and Dark Chocolate/Fleur de Sel. There’s a ton of other flavors and you can find them HERE.

Domaine Labranche

I can’t go to these shows and not buy at least one bottle of ice cider, right? C’mon! That just wouldn’t be right. Fire Cider didn’t quite originate in this show with Domain Labranche but we’re not here to talk about that company. However, Domaine Labranche stole my heart last year when they introduced Fire Cider but as a hot cider drink. You can make it with cinnomon stick and it’ll have this delicious apple and cinnamon smell that just gives off a lovely scent through the house. Its like the drink you picture drinking on a cold winter’s night and its snowing outside and the fireplace is roaring. Yeah…the thought of it all was what happened when I had the fire cider so there was no question when I tasted it again and just fell in love again. I’m actually starting to like fire ciders quite a bit. The way its made gives the drink a nice smooth taste. You can check out Domaine Labranche HERE.

We learned at the show that they also are a vineyard, orchard and maple shack. Maybe we’ll consider it the next time we look for those activities.

Rustique Design by Pascal Normand

Surprising that it isn’t food to end it all off, right? I’ve been looking for artwork for some walls on my house. We’ve moved in for two years and its been a gradual climb to getting it all decorated. As much as I do have complaints about Montreal here and now, which I don’t share here, Montreal is a beautiful city and adding in the rustic feeling on some of the landmarks makes for a really nice touch. This art is called Rustique Design by Pascal Normand. You can check out more HERE.

And thats it! Montreal Crafts Show had a few new vendors. There are still a lot of the same but in general, its a nice place to get gift ideas and seeing as its free entrance, even if you don’t pick up anything, its a nice 2 to 3 hour walking away activity, which is always fun.

My Weekly Adventures: Christmas Prep and Decorations (plus a new DIY skill)

C’mon! You knew this weekly adventures was all about Christmas 😉

What other time would I be able to, right? This year, I actually got my house decorated earlier than two days before Christmas.  Last year, we took so much time looking for decorations and ribbons and beads to decorate the tree that it took us 3 weeks to get it all done. This year, I did my shopping on Black Friday weekend and took care of mostly everything.  We did the outdoor decorations just this past weekend and its also the reason why I only did the update now.  Plus, we’re right on track! Remember 1st and 15th from last post where I was going to attempt this new schedule for Weekly Adventures segment? Right on time! 😉

Its these little achievements that make me happy!

I’ve rambled enough! Let’s talk Christmas! 🙂

1) Christmas decorations around Montreal!

Le Atrium @ 1000 de la Gauchetiere West

Place Ville Marie

Restaurant Costa Del Sole

I know I know…its so little.  I haven’t really had a lot of wandering adventures yet. At least not a lot of new decorations so I’ve already talked about it in previous years.

2) Salon des Metiers d’arts de Montreal (aka Montreal Arts and Crafts Show)

I go to this show every year. I’ve probably talked about it before and showed you my purchases.  The show seems to be getting smaller and smaller but this year, there was quite a few new vendors and they had some rather awesome new products.  We usually go for the foods, snacks, wines and ice cider varieties. Mostly because those are great for parties and gifts for family and friends. This year, I had set a budget and it got me this loot right here (plus a co-gift for my chiropractor which is not shown here).

Starting from the top left to right and next row, here are the items:

• Des Glaces, Ice Cider, Cidrerie du Minot
• Cidre du Feu, Fire Cider, Union Libre
• Bise d’Automne, Vendages Tardives (“late harvest”)/dessert wine, Domaine du Ridge
• Cidre Feu, Fire Cider, Domaine Labranche
• Peppermint Bark, BLINK Chocolate
• Honey and Almond Soft Nougat/Lavender Soft Nougat, La Nougaterie
• Champagne Lychee & Cranberry Jelly, Nutra-Fruit
• Shortbread: Sugar Plum, Almond and Sugared Rose, Pecan, Coach House Shortbread Company

Ice Cider is kind of a Montreal thing.  Quebec has a ton of apple orchards and a bunch of them will also produce ice ciders.  As of last year, Fire Ciders came onto the market from Union Libre and I just loved it.  That’s why it was on my hit list for this year’s show.  Much to my surprise though, Domain Labranche is a new vendor and has this product too except they chose to give us a second option of trying it heated it.  He described it like drinking Sake.  Now, I’m not a fan of sake because its too strong for me but this one tastes absolutely fantastic.  As I drank it, I could picture heating this up, stirring it with a sprig of rosemary or thyme or cinnamon stick (as he suggested to us), and sitting by the fireplace while watching an awesome movie.  Look, if your product can give me a vivid image like that, I just couldn’t refuse getting it. Blink Chocolate is dark chocolate and lactose free and it taste so good.  Its good for little tastes of dessert. As for La Nougaterie, I just love their products.  Last year, I was introduced to Coach House Shortbread and I gave all of them away.  This year, its going to be also a little dessert with tea or coffee or something like that.  It’ll be so awesome.

I’m loving my purchases so far.  This year, there’s not so much about gifts but thinking about how to be a great host for the Christmas party.  I think I’m set! 😉

3) Christmas decorations at my place!

Last year, we just bought the house and I hadn’t moved in yet so all we did was put up a Christmas tree.  This year, since I’m around, I stepped it up.  We took two weekends or so to decorate.  The first to go up was the Christmas tree and some little decorations, then I made a new wreath (I’ve already shown you my other wreath last year so I’ll skip that), and finally some outdoors decorations we set up this past weekend!

Berry Sprigs with Color Lights in a Vase

New Wreath: Blue and White theme

Inflatable Santa with his little companions, Polar Bear and Snowman

Its always nice when plans happen to work out. I still have one more garland to put along my inside stairwell.  I also showed that last year. I have a little bit of rearranging for that one before putting it up.  We’re still debating whether to wrap a ribbon around the Christmas tree.  Those outdoor setup looks really nice. Our area is all about side entrances so no one uses their front doors.  Its a little weird but hey, Santa’s guarding it for me 😉 And my fave goes to my husbands idea of having a few layers of lights on the bay window: clear lights surrounded with a backdrop of blue lights.  I love it! 🙂

As for the last minute addition right before sitting down to draft this post, its the book shelf.  Its newly installed and I just arranged all the TBR books that I own, so the bookworm in me felt like it deserved a little decoration. I guess its also a sneak peek of next year’s reading list, if you can see the titles 😉

4) Making Ribbons the FIRST TIME! 🙂

As you can see that I made a new wreath up there, I had to learn how to make a ribbon.  Last year, I was super lucky and one of my girl friends made it for me.  Hers was much more complex and its on my older wreath thats also hung up somewhere else.  But, I just had to make one this year so I chose that simpler model and found a link on Pinterest that I followed.

Here’s the zoomed in version of the bow:

DIY Bows for Wreath

Pinterest instructions: http://lizoncall.com/2014/09/17/how-to-make-a-big-bow/

Its not perfect, but its my first shot and took me like 20 minutes or something to get it looking fairly balanced.  I’m starting to think it looks a little oversized for my little wreath.  But hey, for a first time, I think I did decent. I’ll give it another shot next year and maybe change to another ribbon if I have to 🙂

5) What is going on with the Weather!?!?!

Its more of a thought than an adventure but I don’t know about all of your whereabouts since I’m guessing it varies but we had one little sprinkle of snow so far and all we’ve gotten was rain.  Last Friday, it was 15 degrees Celsius! That’s a little crazy for being in winter and all.  For my guests sake, I really don’t want to have a storm on Christmas day but I would like to see some snow on the ground by then.  Maybe its just me being Canadian…

The best part however is that the mild weather gave me a chance to go out this past weekend and clear out the rest of my pots on my patio that I didn’t get a chance to do before.  And guess what I found: mint growing in my garden…. Its December and my mint thinks its still okay to grow.  Yikes! Mojito anyone?

6) Upcoming: CHRISTMAS!

You know what? Its Christmas month pretty much with a few days of like after Christmas posts and before New Year’s wrapping up the year posts for that last week.  That’s what you’ll be expecting here.  I wrapped up the first round of Netflix.  The Random Chat Show also kicked off our Christmas Show. I have a few movies planned but this year, I want to get back to DIY crafts and baking so it’ll be a mixed bag.  I’ll have a few really overdue book reviews and extra posts going up that I promised I’d do. My guess is the next weekly adventures I’ll get to talking about plans for next year and 2015 recap and all that good stuff. I still can’t believe there’s only 16 days and 2015 ends! Its a little crazy!

FINALLY…

To wrap it all up, an adorable and somewhat hilarious video of NHL Montreal Canadiens doing a rendition of Frozen’s “Let It Go”.

Happy Tuesday, my lovelies! 🙂

Christmas Baking: Shortbread!

Okay, Christmas is over but well, seeing as today is Boxing Day, I figured its not totally inappropriate to still use this title 😉 The final baked goods I made for Christmas was shortbread.

I am horrible at shortbread but every single time I do this, I change how I approach it a little and how that it’ll turn out better. This time, the taste was pretty spot on.  The cookies did not turn out how I wanted them to look though.  Hmm…I need to figure that part out. Here they are!

Shortbread!

The recipe is from Betty Crocker’s Christmas Cookbook.

SHORTBREAD

Makes about 2 dozen cookies

Ingredients

3/4 cup butter or margarine, softened

1/4 cup sugar

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon almond extract, if desired

1. Heat oven to 350F. In large bowl, beat butter and sugar with electric mixer on medium speed, or mix with spoon.  Stir in flour and almond extract.  (If dough is crumbly, mix in additional 1 to 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened.)

2. On lightly floured surface, roll dough into 9×6 inch rectangle, 1/2 inch thick.  Cut into 1 1/2 inch squares with knife or cut with 1 1/2 inch cookie cutters.  On ungreased cookie sheet, place squares or shapes about 1 inch apart.

3. Bake 12 to 14 minutes or until set.  Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.  Cool completely about 30 minutes.

Lets start with modifications.  I used vanilla extract instead of almond extract.  Which comes to the point that I could have done brown sugar shortbread by replacing the sugar with brown sugar but I didn’t read that far until after I poured the sugar in.  What could I say? Next time, right?

Regardless, I pulled out my new bite size cookie cutters that my mom bought for me in Hong Kong on her last trip, thats why its not completely Christmas theme but there was teddy bears and stars.  I do have to say, this is the most impressive batch I’ve made which makes this pretty sad.

The taste was very delicious: a nice balance between buttery and sweetness.  It was crumbly and melted in my mouth.  I loved it! Like I said, I’m quite proud of the taste.  Only thing I need to work on is the appearance. 🙂

I still have some potluck baking in a few days so I have more baking and cooking going up.  It’ll be a fun final run to bring in 2014. So come back for more, k?

Hope all of you had a great Christmas celebrations and enjoy the boxing day sales! 🙂

Christmas Shopping at Salon des Metiers D’Arts & More!

Wow! Its been a pretty intense weekend on my end! Thats usually how December weekends look all the way to 2014!

I finally  had time to sit down in front of the computer and type this up!

For those of you that follow my workouts know that I’ve been on my Dietbet, after Friday night’s Dragonboat practice, I lost a bit more weight on my weigh-in making the first week look pretty alright.  Plus, it was an intense workout and it was pretty fun.  It felt great to get back into paddling, although after a long break, my behind is aching again.  Still, I’m happy to be back. One more practice before we have Christmas vacation and resume in January. I’m still on part-time for winter however, but its probably for the best.

Wet after practice

Saturday was an early start! I went out for a walk to the bank instead of taking my car.  It was supposed to be warm but I still geared up.

First take!

So, I left in that outfit and then when I walked outside onto the street a gust of wind reminded me that I forgot something so I went back and put on my new hat.  Its really well insulated and that was my Black Friday find 🙂

New Hat!

After that was piano and then running off to my annual Christmas shopping at the Salon des Metiers D’arts of Montreal which is also called the Montreal Arts and Crafts Show. It features arts and crafts entrepreneurs and companies based on Quebec.  It usually has some pretty awesome stalls to start and in the back is where we hit the food and wine products which is a whole lot of tasting involved.  As I’m on antibiotics, my friends did all the tasting of anything alcoholic while I just sniffed it to get an idea and they gave me suggestions as to which was better.  Still, one stop to clear most of my Christmas shopping is a sure win for me.  Lets check it out!

Everything that I bought at the show

Lets take a look one by one!

First buy was last year’s winner in my book, food-wise, La Nougaterie. They sell nougats and this year they even had marshmallows and for $20 it had 3 nougat bars with a bag of marshmallows and the little Christmas basket. Thats the one in the center on that picture.

Dried Orange Cranberry & Cranberry with Apple Ice Wine Jelly

Next was the Nutra-Fruit kiosk with their Dried Cranberries infused with Orange flavor which was super delicious and out of all their jellies, my friend said that this Cranberry with Applie Ice Wine Jelly was pretty good.  I gave this to my mom as her birthday gift as it was also her birthday on Saturday 🙂

Pistachio Shortbread Cookies

Next one is a new kiosk called Dinette Nationale who is a sweet factory.  They have this awesome tasting Pistachio Shortbread Cookies.  I gave those to my boyfriend’s parents earlier today since they love pistachio and shortbread so this was a winner 🙂

After that, is the highlight of the show for us.  Not so much for me because I only got to watch all the tasting.

Wines

I ended up with these 3 bottles.  I’m going to gift the two on the side and the one in the middle is for myself and Christmas dinner. The two on the left are apple ice wines (my fave!).  The one on the left is a new one and it requires a day of refrigeration and then an hour before to put in the freezer to fully get the best flavor.  The one in the middle is Neige Recolte D’hiver, which is their reserved batch and its one of my favorite ice wines.  The one on the right is called Bise D’automne and its a white wine infused with apple, pear and almonds.

Last up, we have this:

Blackcurrant Jelly and Blackcurrant Ketchup

Cassis Monna & Filles is a winery that focuses on blackcurrant flavored products.  I first bought their product for the Creme de Cassis and Blackcurrant Liquour which makes a wonderful Kir or mixed with their recipe, a very delicious blackcurrant based Sangria. This time, I tried some of their jelly and whats funny was that they introduced their new product as Christmas in a Jar.  When I tasted it, I felt like it had hints of ketchup taste to it and that was weird because I thought it was jelly but it turns out, its actually Blackcurrant Ketchup.  Its good for meat pies and white meat, similar to cranberry sauce 🙂 The other one is Blackcurrant Jelly.  These were bought for my own home.

That whole thing took about 3.5 hours to get through the whole thing. Its a pretty neat show.  I enjoy going every year and its fantastic for nice original gift ideas to meet all the needs that you want. A very efficient Saturday 🙂

On Sunday, I had a full day of running all over the place and finally, at night I managed to settle down to take pictures of my Christmas decorations.  My little Christmas tree as always…

My Christmas Tree

And finally, last time with the girls, I bought a whole bunch of stuff for Christmas decorations for a wreath and I put one together and it looked like this!

My Christmas Winter Berry Scented wreath!

I bought everything separate but it was great to put it all together! What do you think? My first time putting one together so a little encouragement please? Should I add something more?

I’m going to spare you all music video since I just posted one whole post on it earlier today, if you missed it, check it out HERE!

Are all your decorations up? How is Christmas shopping going for you?

By the way, just wanted to give a little update! Christmas marathon starts tomorrow and I’m going to weave in some 2013 movies that I’ve been meaning to catch up on to wrap up the year in style 🙂

A Fun and Delicious Weekend with Family and Friends!

This weekend, I’ve been a tad quiet, although I did post up my normal personal blog.  I will be posting up another bonus one some time this week, just an update based on all the self-reflection I’ve done this weekend.  BUT onto happier things!..What better way to pass a weekend than with family and friends? They totally helped me put my worries aside for a little bit.

Right now is the time to talk about what happened on my extremely busy but fun part of my past weekend! The parts where my brain could be shut off it was fantastic fun.  On Saturday, in collaboration with one of my friends, we had a “reunion” party at my house.  The goal was to get everyone together or as many as possible in our group of friends now that summer is just around the corner and we sit together and have good laughs, eat and chat.  We managed to round up a good 15-16 people in total (including me) and we had tons of food for the potluck.

I didn’t have time to take pictures of some foods, mostly ready made ones like the McCain Three Cheese Pizza and cooked frozen foods from M&M Meat Shops, like the lasagna, garlic bread and the hors d’oeuvres.  We had a Ceasar Salad from Costco.  Those things I didn’t particularly take pictures of either, except for one. Other than that, we had some salad, meat dishes, desserts.

Hors d’oeuvres

Quinoa Salad

Shepherd’s Pie

Turkey Meatloaf (from me)

I’ve featured this one before.  This time around I did it completely to the recipe, at least I added those chopped apples.  You can check it out HERE! I will keep using apples for this one because it gives it a nice moist texture, better than when I made it without.

Stir-Fried Veggies (from my best friend)

Viet-Style Chicken (from my best friend)

My best friend also made Oven-baked Asparagus.  I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of it.  They were delicious! My best friend is a really awesome cook. Which is totally cool because we complement each other.

Now, I know you all were looking forward to the desserts.  I apologize that I didn’t get a picture of the Chocolate Chip cookies before they were all eaten.  I did catch the Shortbread cookies

Shortbread cookies

And another one of my friends made some truffles.

Truffles

Doesn’t this look totally awesome and delicious? The best was being with a nice group of friends and having a good relaxed time.  Some others contributed alcohol, like wine and whatnot.  One of them brought me SoHo lycee liqueur.  He usually drops by my blog so I’m going to thank him here.  He’s one of my long time friend’s boyfriend and also a fellow Dragonboat teammate.  He’s been introducing me to cool liqueurs ever since we’ve been friends and having these parties.

We ended Saturday with a collective board game of Apples for Apples where the majority joined in. Some of us were busy talking about a new baking project so we skipped but then followed through and went downstairs for 2 games of Mahjong and trained 2 friends to play.  It was fun even though it wasn’t long.  I haven’t played in a while but its always enjoyable.

I know this post is getting long but Sunday was a quick day for me.  I ended up going over to my boyfriend’s place with some homemade hamburger patties and ate with his parents.  I made those awesome scones that I posted about yesterday.  If you missed that post, you can drop by HERE!

I had a fantastic chat next to these beautiful hanging flowers with my boyfriend’s mom.  She is the sweetest lady ever! We’re both bookworms so we talked a lot about that.

Excuse the bad angle.  It was the furthest I could go before having the danger of falling down the spiralling stairs…Still, I wished that sun had stayed around.  Its all gloomy and rainy again. I just wish this spring weather would disappear for a while and let summer drop in for a bit longer than a day…

Sunday dinner: Burgers with Homemade fries!

At least we’re breaking out the summer meals and enjoying whatever good weather we can 🙂

If not, the weekend would’ve been totally rubbish, if not for my awesome friends and family! They brought in the sunlight and pushed those dark days away for a little bit! Finding the positives..I’m still trying to keep that up! 🙂

Dried Cranberry Shortbread Hearts

I promised that I would get you some Valentine’s baking yesterday but something came up and I didn’t quite manage to get that up.  You know, life happens.  I guarantee it was nothing bad though.  Just some changes might or might not happen in life and if it does settle down, I’ll share it with everyone.  For now, let’s turn our focus to my first Valentine’s baking.  I know I know, Shortbread…again, right? To be honest, shortbread is starting to grow on me. And I can actually eat this and its easy to make.

Doesn’t this look cute and delicious?

Right here is the recipe if you’d like to try it out.  Found this on the Martha Stewart site.

http://www.marthastewart.com/338922/dried-cranberry-shortbread-hearts?center=276967&gallery=874690&slide=338922

This is a super easy one. Unless you can cut beautiful hearts out of a sheet, I’d recommend a cookie cutter.  That’s the reason why its taken me so long. I was going to make them into cupcakes.  You know its sweet to give someone you loved a cookie shaped in a cupcake, its like calling them that, right?

Other than being easy to make, this one had a wonderful texture.  Its probably one of the best shortbread recipes I’ve had.

Just look at it. Its not too dry and crumbly but was balanced with a bit of nice slightly moist balance.  The dried cranberries really give it a nice little touch.

I managed to get 5 hearts out of this with a whole bunch of tidbits on the sides.  So far I haven’t found the heart to eat the beautiful shortbread hearts.

 How could you right? They just look so nice!

10 days from Valentine’s day now! Any ideas what else I should bake?

I probably will be back with something else on Friday. The office is still a bit hectic and have a few sudden things resulting from what happened to take care of.  Lets hope I can still manage to keep up with my posts 🙂

Happy Monday everyone!

Shortbread!

I’m finally back with more baked goods! I’ve been taking a break after the whole holiday baking frenzy.  Now I’m ready to get back to business with that…

First up we have SHORTBREAD.  I had wanted to do them for Christmas but decided to do Gingerbread Cookies instead.  So here we are with these wonderful cookies.

SHORTBREAD (from the Betty Crocker Christmas Cookbook)

Makes about 2 dozen cookies (I got about 18 cookies!)

Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter, softened

1/4 cup sugar

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp almond extract

1. Heat oven to 350F.  In large bowl, beat butter and sugar with electric mixer on medium speed.  Stir in flour and almond extract.

2. On lightly floured surface, roll dough into 9×6 inch rectangle, 1/2 inch thick.  Cut into 1 1/2 inch squares with knife or cut with 1 1/2 inch cookie cutters.  On ungreased cookie sheet, place squares or shapes about 1 inch apart.

3. Bake 12 to 14 minutes or until set.  Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.  Cool completely about 30 minutes.

First batch out of the oven!

The dough will turn out to be on the crumbly side.  I wonder if thats normal because I had that same situation with another recipe, the Peppermint Swirls,  with the same type of texture. You can click HERE for that recipe if you’re interested. I didn’t want to use food coloring to decorate it since it was just for fun.  If I do a batch with it in a more decorative way, I’ll post it up in an update!

The texture was crumbly and delicious.  The taste was perfect.  Both my mom and my boyfriend enjoyed them a lot.  These may not have turned out super pretty and colourful but it still was quite tasty.  Definitely something fun to try out!

Do you like shortbread? Are there any ways to make it less crumbly for the dough, maybe with more butter? Any ideas? Do you have another recipe that differs from this one? Feel free to share the link or suggest it! My mom seems to like shortbread a lot so I’m searching for the perfect recipe.