Mocha Chocolate Shortbread

When there's happiness to be shared, it should always be accompanied by chocolate. Is that not true?

So, here I'am sharing happiness with all of you again. And that does come with chocolate too. There are many reasons to be thankful and happy - and my biggest reason now is that my little girl is here - she was born the first week in November. And yes, when the say a baby changes life, its all true. Now I have two little girls to spoil - and oh yes a lot more girly shopping that I can indulge in!

Another big reason to be thankful and happy is that my blog turns 3 today! My heartfelt thanks to all of you for being a part of the blog. Thanks for all your wonderful and supportive feedback even though I've not been very active the last couple of months.

Here's a super easy shortbread recipe - a favorite of mine from the Southern Living magazine archives. If you have an IPad - download the Southern Living My Recipes app - it provides a beautiful dessert recipe for every day of the year and some more. The app costs about 4 bucks but its all worth it if you enjoy baking or just looking at pretty pictures.

Here the link to the original recipe - Mocha Chocolate Shortbread from Southern Living 

Get all your ingredients in place.

1 1/4 cup of All purpose flour
1/2 cup of powdered sugar
2 tsps of Instant coffee granules ( I used taster's choice)
2/3 cup of softened butter
2 cups of semi - sweet chocolate chip morsels
2 tsps vanilla extract - the recipe calls for it - but I was all out and just skipped using it. Trust me, I did not miss it

The great thing about this recipe is that it is an eggless recipe as well and takes about 5 mins to prepare. You can make this as a quick dessert when you have friends over for an impromptu dinner.

To a mixing bowl, add the flour, sugar and instant coffee crystals.

Add the butter and vanilla extract and mix well in slow speed. It is very important that the butter is softened and not completely melted in order to get the crisp texture of the shortbread.

And this is how the dough looks once mixed well.

Now add 1 cup of the semi sweet chocolate chips to the dough and mix well using a spatula.

Spread out the dough in an ungreased 9 inch square pan.

Using a fork, poke in a few times to aerate the surface.

Bake in a pre heated oven at 325F for about 20 mins until the top gets a little brown.

Switch off the oven and immediately add the remaining 1 cup of semi sweet morsels. I added a few more of milk chocolate morsels ( because two little hands and a mouth ate some of my semi sweet chips in the pretext of helping me in the kitchen!)

In a couple of mins, the chocolate chips would be melted. Spread it around with a spatula and make an even coating of chocolate on top of the shortbread.

Can I just dive in here and swim??

Cut the shortbread into little pieces while its still warm. Then let it cool for about 30 mins to an hr. That's the hardest part of the whole process.

Obviously I could wait - who has 30 mins, right?? These were just oh so melt in your mouth good. Glad I did not wait...all the wet chocolate is worth the warm shortbread..if you know what I mean..just go ahead and indulge. 

Since the theme for A Sweet Punch Series this month was anything that we'd like to bake, I'm sending this across there as well. 

Enjoy. Peace Out!

And Thank You for making 3 years of blogging so much fun!