Robin brought these to one of our meetings and they were absolutely delicious!
Ingredients
1 cup vegan “butter” or vegan margarine
½ cup powdered (confectioners) sugar
¼ cup cornstarch
1 ¾ cup plain flour
Pinch of salt
1 cup non-dairy chocolate chips
½ cup toasted nuts
Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Line one 8 x 8 baking pan with cooking parchment.
Toast nuts in pan on stovetop or in toaster oven until just browned and fragrant.
Beat “butter” and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Beat in cornstarch and salt.
Add flour and mix in by hand until batter is crumbly. Don’t over mix or it will become tough.
Tip into pan and distribute evenly. Apply slight pressure with finger tips to bring batter / dough together.
Bake for 15 minutes in middle of oven.
Turn off heat and pour chocolate chips over the shortbread base and return to oven for 1 minute (with oven turned off). Remove from oven and spread the melted chips across the entire top of the base. Pour toasted nuts over the melted chocolate evenly, making sure to get the corners too.
Let sit at cool room temperature for at least one hour before removing from pan.
Cut into squares and Enjoy!
Notes:
If you want to use this recipe for just plain vegan shortbread, it works for that as well. Just be sure to bring the batter together completely, you don’t want it crumbly for cookies without the chocolate top. Instead of using 1 ¾ cup of flour, reduce the amount of flour to 1 ½ cups.
You could use this base for other squares as well. Once the cookie base is baked, you can add ½ cup of jam or preserves and top with a simple crumble topping.