Olive, cheese, and rosemary savory shortbreads

Another festive event at the dojo, another excuse to bake. I had already planned and started preparing a double batch of miso caramel marbled shortbreads, but a friend got me thinking of providing a savory option as well. As I had made that decision very last minute (near midnight the day before I would need it), I had to make do with what ingredients I had on hand. Enter these savory shortbreads.

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I got the original recipe from Cakelets and Doilies, and with the short amount of time I had, took the gamble to double the amounts from the get-go without having previously tested it. So I grabbed a jar of olives and some cheese, and started measuring out the ingredients. To my dismay, the “Greek style” olives I took had pits so I first had to remove those. I also wasn’t ready to grate the ~200 g of parmesan I would’ve needed, so did only about 25 g before filling up the rest of the volume with frozen, grated emmental. When taste-tasting the dough, I also decided to add some dried rosemary (all I had on hand) into the dough. The recipe below contains the proportions I used, although the amounts of olive, cheese, and rosemary are to taste, so they don’t have to be so accurate (as indicated by the tilde ~ in the amount given).

The color of the olives did bleed into the rest of the dough, which didn’t bother me. One way to remedy that would be to mix together all the ingredients except for the olives into a cohesive dough first, then add in the olives. Another thing is that since I was using frozen cheese and improvising my way with my procrastination, it did threaten to harden my dough as I was mixing it in. So if you want to go with a similar route as I did, I would probably recommend to take your cheese out to thaw ahead of time.

Once I was happy with the texture and flavor, I split the dough in half, and shaped each into a squared log. These I wrapped in baking paper, and refrigerated overnight. The day of the event, I sliced them into 4-5 mm thick shortbreads. To decide whether to follow through with adding flaky salt and (dried) rosemary, as well as to test the baking parameters without the 10 min freezing step in the original recipe, I put one shortbread to bake on the tray with the miso caramel ones so that I could give it a taste before baking the rest of them. This allowed me to opt for no extra salt, but to add a small pinch of rosemary on each shortbread, since the olives I used were quite salty to begin with.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 100 g flour
• 150 g unsalted butter, softened
• ~50 g black olives, minced
• ~12 g parmesan, grated
• ~42 g grated emmental, or cheese of choice
• ~1 g dried rosemary, and more for garnish
• ground pepper, to taste

  Procedure

1. In a bowl, combine all ingredients.
2. Mix until homogeneous.
3. Shape the dough into a log, and wrap in baking paper or cling film.
4. Refrigerate overnight.
5. Preheat oven 170°C.
6. Remove dough from the fridge and leave it warm slightly while the oven preheats.
7. Slice into 4-5 mm rounds. Place on a lined baking tray.
8. Garnish each shortbread with a pinch of dried rosemary. Press lightly to adhere it to the shortbreads.
9. Bake at 170°C for 16 mins, rotating the tray halfway.
10. Let cool on the tray for 5 mins, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.