These rose cardamom pistachio shortbread cookies are buttery, melt in your mouth, shortbread cookies dipped in a shiny layer of rose flavoured glaze and will dazzle at your next celebration! These cookies are delicate, buttery, crisp, and perfect for Valentine’s Day celebrations! They are fun to make and delicious to eat. They are absolutely adorable and cute. These cookies are surprisingly easy to make and only requires a few ingredients. Make these for a special occasion and enjoy with friends and loved ones during any season!
INGREDIENTS YOU’LL NEED:
- Unsalted Butter: Since butter is a main flavor here, I would really recommend springing for a higher-quality brand. It is very important to have your butter at room temperature. You can ensure this by lightly pressing your finger on the block of butter. It should slightly leave an imprint. I also prefer to use unsalted butter because salted butters have varying amounts of salt content in them and it is always a good idea to add it on your own and avoid your bakes from being too salty.
- Granulated Sugar: Sugar acts as a binding agent to your cookies along with adding sweetness. You can use either granulated sugar, powdered sugar or caster sugar to make these cookies. Make sure you only use superfine sugar to get that melt in your mouth texture.
- Almond Extract: You must use a high quality pure almond extract in your recipes. This helps to add a rich flavour to your baked goods especially when they contain flavours like rose and cardamom. This enhances the flavour of all ingredients and you should never leave it out. You can alternatively swap it with vanilla extract. Pure vanilla extracts are typically dark brown in color.
- All purpose flour: I highly recommend weighing all your ingredients using a kitchen scale for accurate recipe results. If you’re using cups, don’t scoop your cup into the flour. Spoon the flour into your cup and level it off with the back of a knife. You can also use a mix of all purpose and hazelnut flour alternatively.
- Kosher Salt: Adding a pinch of salt helps to balance out the flavours in the cookies. I have added sea salt for a little extra flavour however you can use normal iodised salt too.
- Ground Cardamom: You will need ground cardamom to add to these cookies. This spice is one of the key ingredients required to make this rose flavoured cookies.
- Rose extract or Rose water: I flavoured this glaze with rosewater to add a distinct scent and rose flavour to it which is a classic quality of a Persian love cookies. Do not use more than the mentioned quantity to avoid an overpowering flavour.
- Powdered Sugar: You will need powdered of confectioners’ sugar to add to your vanilla rose glaze. It mixes in your glaze like a breeze and leaves no grainy lumps at all!
- Milk or Heavy Cream: You will need a few tablespoons of whole milk or heavy full fat cream to add to your vanilla rose glaze as required to achieve the right consistency for the glaze.
- Pink food coloring: It is very important to use gel coloring as liquid food coloring will make your glaze watery and hence it won’t stay on top of your cookies and instead slide right off of them.
- Crushed Pistachios: This cookies are traditionally topped with a few tablespoons of ground pistachios.
- Rose petals: To make it even more beautiful and appealing, you can further sprinkle these cookies with dried rose petals.
FAQ
1. Whisk together all the dry ingredients and wet ingredients to make the shortbread cookie dough using a hand mixer, stand mixer or a food processor.
2. Wrap the dough in a plastic wrap and chill it in the fridge for at least one hour or up to a few days.
3. On a lightly floured surface, roll out one disk of dough to ⅛” in thickness. Use a round cookie cutter to cut 3 inch heart cookies from the rolled dough.
4. Place all cutout cookie dough on baking sheets. Place the scrap cookie dough back in the fridge for about 15 minutes before re-rolling.
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and bake cookies for about 8 minutes. Allow cookies to cool completely on the baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining cookie dough.
6. In a small bowl, mix together milk, rose extract and powdered. Add a drop of orange gel coloring. Set aside.
7. Dip the cookies into the rose glaze to get the pattern you can see in the pictures above. To do this, dip either half of the cookie into glaze, or the entire cookie into the glaze supporting it with a fork.
8. Top the glazed part of the cookies with crushed rose petals and pistachios.
9. Store cookies in an airtight container.
Since shortbread cookies are meant to be crisp, store them at room temperature covered loosely with aluminium foil for upto a week.
You can double or half this recipe as per your needs. However I have to warn you, these cookies are really so addictive that you’ll finish a batch in no time.
TIPS TO MAKE THE PRETTIEST COOKIES:
- Do not over mix the dough. Because we do not want to incorporate much air into the dough, be sure to mix the butter and sugars together on low speed. Mixing at a higher speed for too long will aerate the dough and leave you with cookies that spread too much in the oven.
- Roll the dough before chilling. For best results I like to roll the dough as soon as it’s ready. Roll the dough to 3/8 inch thick between two pieces of parchment paper and then pop it in the freezer for at least 15 minutes before cutting the shapes. Once the shapes are cut, place the cookies on a parchment lined baking sheet and return them to the freezer for 10 minutes before baking them in a preheated oven. The extra chill time will help to prevent any spreading in the oven.
- Do not over bake. For those soft, buttery, melt in your mouth cookies be sure to pull them from the oven when the edges are set and lightly golden brown and the center of the cookie is puffed and pale. The middle of the cookies might seem slightly under baked but the residual heat from the pan will continue to bake the cookies once they are removed from the oven.
- Cool the cookies completely. Be sure to let the cookies cool for 10 minutes on the cookie sheets once removed from the oven. Then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Use gel coloring: Using gel or powdered coloring is very important while making your glaze to avoid any lumps. Liquid coloring can make your glaze watery and thus it will slide right off the cookies instead of staying on them.
HOW TO GET THE BEST RESULTS FROM THIS RECIPE?
All of the recipes on the blog are thoroughly tested multiple times and carefully designed so that anyone can reproduce these delicious baked good in their own kitchen and enjoy them to the fullest. The only way to make this possible is when anyone can exactly replicate the measurements and temperatures.
- In order to standardise the way ingredients are measured, I highly recommend that you weigh them in grams. Volume measurements are nearly not as accurate and have a lot of scope for errors. To precisely be able to replicate the recipes, all you will need is a kitchen scale!
- Every oven heats up differently. Your oven might be over heating or under heating by around 50 degrees or more and you might not even know. In order to ensure that you are baking at the right temperatures, I highly recommend investing in an oven thermometer!
If you would still like to bake using volume measurements, I mentioned those below. However, I primarily test my recipes in grams and cannot promise the best results if you do so. Trust me, once you’ll start using these tools you’d never want to go back!
I hope you’ll enjoy these easy Rose Pistachio Cookies this Valentine’s Day and don’t forget to bookmark this recipe for the holidays. These cute cookies are my favorite and perfect to celebrate any occasion with friends and family!
Happy baking! x
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Rose Cardamom Pistachio Shortbread Cookies
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 18–20 cookies 1x
Description
These rose cardamom pistachio shortbread cookies are buttery, melt in your mouth, shortbread cookies dipped in a shiny layer of rose flavoured glaze and will dazzle at your next celebration! These cookies are delicate, buttery, crisp, and perfect for Valentine’s Day celebrations!
Ingredients
SHORTBREAD COOKIES
- 218g (1¾ cups) all purpose flour, spooned and levelled
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
- 170g (¾ cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 100g (½ cup) granulated or caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon pure almond or vanilla extract
ROSE GLAZE
- 120g (1 cup) powdered sugar, sifted
- 2 tablespoons whole milk or heavy cream, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon full fat greek yogurt, at room temperature
- ½ teaspoon rose extract or rosewater
- 2 drops pink gel food coloring
- crushed pistachios, to top the cookies
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350° F and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, cardamom and salt. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, cream the butter and granulated sugar until the mixture is fluffy and pale yellow. Add the almond extract. Then, add the flour a cup at a time, until you have a crumbly dough that’s starting to come together.
- Turn the dough onto a pastry or cutting board. Press the dough together with clean hands until you have a smooth ball of dough. Cut the dough into two, and flatten each portion into a 1/2” disc. Wrap with plastic wrap, and freeze for about 15 minutes or refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll each disc of dough until it’s 1/4” thick. Cut out an even number of 3” hearts with a cookie cutter.
- Place the cookies 1” apart on the prepared sheets, and bake for 8-10 minutes, until the bottoms and edges are lightly browned. Let cool for about 5 minutes on the pan, and then move the cookies to a wire rack to completely cool.
- In a small bowl, mix together milk, rose extract, yogurt and powdered sugar. Add a drop or two of pink gel coloring. Set aside.
- Dip the cookies into the rose glaze to get the pattern you can see in the pictures above. To do this, dip either half of the cookie into glaze, or the entire cookie into the glaze supporting it with a fork.
- Top the glazed part of the cookies with crushed rose petals and pistachios.
- Store cookies in an airtight container upto 5 days.
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
- Category: Rose, Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: Persian
Keywords: rose pistachio cookies, rose pistachio shortbread cookies, cardamom rose cookies
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