Rosemary Shortbread -- fresh and herby for fall #recipe by @LeslieBudewitz

LESLIE BUDEWITZ:  I’m willing to bet that if you combed the fabulous Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen archive – on the right and left sidebars of the blog – you’d find more recipes for shortbread and scones than just about anything else. I’m doing my best to add to them, with scone recipes in both this year’s Spice Shop book and next! (The latest: Lemon Cream Scones)

And today, the perfect shortbread to capture the distinctive taste of an herb I love, especially as the glory days of summer wind down. 

My dear friend Sandra, the inspiration for Sandra Piniella, the Spice Shop assistant manager, is one of the people who sparked my love of cooking and food. Occasionally, I’ll see a recipe in the NY Times food blog and ask her to get it for me, since she subscribes. Recently, a package arrived from her with a beautiful notebook, dark chocolate, a bag of rosemary from her garden, and this recipe. (How she knew I hadn’t grown rosemary this year, I have no idea.) When I saw that it was by Melissa Clark, one of our favorite NY Times food writers, I knew we’d love it. 

Reader, we did.

The recipe is so easy that even a non-baker or newbie can make it flawlessly, though I did clarify the instructions a bit. I’ve left the amount of sugar as written; I might cut it a tad next time. We sprinkled flake salt on top of half the pan when it came out of the oven – so good! Mr. Right suggested a drizzle of chocolate, and since I’d just made a jar of our luscious chocolate Cabernet sauce, that was easy; a sprinkle of flake salt was yummy there, too.

PS: I finally figured out how to embed a PDF of the recipe for easy printing. Scroll down to the 💕 for the link. 

Rosemary Shortbread 

adapted from a recipe by Melissa Clark in the NY Times 

2 cups all-purpose flour

2/3 cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary

1 rounded teaspoon kosher salt

1 cup (2 sticks) cold butter, cut into chunks

flake salt, dark chocolate, or dark chocolate syrup (optional garnish)

Heat oven to 325 degrees. Using a food processor, pulse together flour, sugar, rosemary, and salt. Add butter and pulse into fine crumbs, then pulse a few more times until bigger crumbs start to form (“gathering”), being careful not to overprocess. Mixture will be crumbly, not smooth or doughy.

Press into an 8 or 9 inch square baking pan. Prick top all over with a fork. (Tip: Hold the tines of the fork with your fingers when you pull it out of the unbaked mixture, to prevent crumbs from sticking to the fork and to keep the vent holes open.) Bake until golden brown, 35-40 minutes. Remove from oven; top with flake salt if you’d like.

Cool in pan on a wire rack. Cut into squares while still warm. 

Optional: Before serving, drizzle with melted chocolate or chocolate syrup and sprinkle with flake salt.

Enjoy! 

💕 Click here for a free printable PDF! 

TO ERR IS CUMIN:A Spice Shop Mystery (Seventh St. Books, out now in paper, ebook, and audio)

From the cover: 

One person’s treasure is another’s trash. . .

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, wants nothing more than to live a quiet life for a change, running her shop and working with customers eager to spice up their cooking. But when she finds an envelope stuffed with cash in a ratty old wingback left on the curb, she sets out to track down the owner.

Pepper soon concludes that the chair and its stash may belong to young Talia Cook, new in town and nowhere to be seen. Boz Bosworth, an unemployed chef Pepper’s tangled with in the past, shows up looking for the young woman, but Pepper refuses to help him search. When Boz is found floating in the Ship Canal, only a few blocks from Talia’s apartment, free furniture no longer seems like such a bargain.

On the hunt for Talia, Pepper discovers a web of connections threatening to ensnare her best customer. The more she probes, the harder it gets to tell who’s part of an unsavory scheme of corruption—and who might be the next victim.

Between her quest for an elusive herb, helping her parents remodel their new house, and setting up the Spice Shop’s first cooking class, Pepper’s got a full plate. Dogged by a sense of obligation to find the rightful owner of the hidden treasure, she keeps on showing up and asking questions.

One mistake, and she could find herself cashing out. . .

Available at Amazon  * Barnes & Noble  * Books-A-Million * Bookshop.org * And your local booksellers!

And coming in September:

Take a step back in time with All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection of historical short mysteries, featuring the Agatha-Award winning "All God's Sparrows" and other stories imagining the life of real-life historical figure Mary Fields, born into slavery in 1832, during the last thirty years of her life, in Montana. Coming September 17, 2024 from Beyond the Page Publishing; available for preorder now wherever you buy books. 

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Spice Shop Mysteries set in Seattle's Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in NW Montana. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody, standalone suspense, most recently Blind Faith. She is the winner of Agatha Awards in three categories: Best Nonfiction (2011), Best First Novel (2013), and Best Short Story (2018). Her latest book is Between a Wok and a Dead Place, the 7th Spice Shop mystery.  Watch for To Err is Cumin, the 8th Spice Shop Mystery, in July 2024 and All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection, in September 2024. 

A past president of Sisters in Crime and national board member of Mystery Writers of America, Leslie lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

Swing by Leslie's website and join the mailing list for her seasonal newsletter. And join her on Facebook where she shares book news and giveaways from her writer friends, and talks about food, mysteries, and the things that inspire her.