Cranberry Cornmeal Shortbread Wedges
Cranberry Cornmeal Shortbread Wedges are buttery, crunchy triangle cookies that look like someone dropped tiny red jewels into some tasty looking dough. The cornmeal makes them extra crispy and a little gritty in the best way, while the fresh cranberries stay super tart, so the cookies aren’t candy-sweet like normal shortbread. They taste fancy but only require stuff you already have in the kitchen. Win-win.
Cranberry Cornmeal Shortbread Wedges
6-Ingredients
🍚 Ingredients
- •
1½ cups all-purpose flour
- •
½ cup fine yellow cornmeal
- •
1/3 cup sugar (white or light brown)
- •
½ teaspoon salt
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¾ cup (1½ sticks) cold butter, cut into small cubes
- •
1 cup fresh cranberries, chopped in half or quarters
- •
Optional: zest of ½ orange for extra sparkle
📋 Directions
- 1.
Oven: Heat oven to 350 °F (175 °C). Line an 8-inch or 9-inch round cake pan with parchment. - 2.
Oven: Mix flour, cornmeal, sugar, and salt in a bowl. - 3.
Oven: Add cold butter cubes and rub in with your fingers (or pulse in food processor) until it looks like wet sand. - 4.
Oven: Stir in chopped cranberries (and zest if using). - 5.
Oven: Press the dough evenly into the pan – it will feel crumbly but will stick together when baked. - 6.
Oven: Bake 28–32 minutes until deep golden at the edges. Cool in the pan 10 minutes, then cut into 16 wedges while still warm. Let cool completely before lifting out.
💡 Recipe Notes
- •Use cold butter – warm butter = flat, tough cookies.
- •Don’t skip chopping the cranberries – whole ones explode and make holes.
- •Press the dough really firmly into the pan or the wedges fall apart.
- •Cut while warm – once fully cold the shortbread is too crisp to slice neatly.
- •They taste even better the next day and stay crunchy for a week in a tin.
How to Make These Wedges Turn Out Perfect (and What Usually Goes Wrong)
The big secrets are: keep everything COLD and press super hard. Cold butter and even a cold bowl make the shortbread flaky and crunchy instead of hard like a rock. The number-one mistake is not chopping the cranberries small enough – big pieces leak juice and make holes, then the wedges crumble when you cut them. Another oops is taking them out of the oven too early – they look done when the edges are deep golden, not light tan. Last mess-up is trying to cut them when they’re ice-cold; do it while they’re still a tiny bit warm or they snap into a million pieces.
How to Make Them Healthier Without Ruining Them
Swap half the white flour for whole-wheat pastry flour (nobody notices), drop the sugar to ¼ cup, and use half butter + half coconut oil. Toss in ¼ cup almond flour or ground oats for extra fiber, and add a handful of chopped walnuts or pumpkin seeds for protein crunch. Some people even use mashed avocado instead of some butter – sounds weird but keeps them soft and adds good fat. Now you can eat three for breakfast and tell your spouse they’re basically oatmeal cookies in disguise 🙂
Most Common Variations
And here is what they look like:
Lemon
Chocolate Orange
Maple Pecan
Cardamom Pistachio
White Chocolate
Not very Popular
Cranberry Cornmeal Shortbread Wedges are still a total secret recipe. You almost never see them on big Christmas cookie trays because everybody just makes sugar cookies or gingerbread instead. Only a few cool aunts or a particular bakery knows about them, so when you bring a plate to school or a party, people go “WHOA, what ARE those?!” and then fight over the last piece. They’re unpopular in a good way – like finding a hidden level in a video game that nobody else unlocked yet. Once people taste one, they beg for the recipe, but most folks still haven’t discovered them. So be the first and claim your fame during the holidays.
Where This Recipe Came From
These wedges started way back in the 1800s when pioneer ladies in cold places like New England and Canada mixed cornmeal into their shortbread to make expensive flour last longer. Cornmeal was cheap and crunchy, and they had tons of cranberries growing wild. They baked it in a round pan and cut triangles because it was easier than rolling cookies in a snowy kitchen. The recipe got written on little cards and passed from grandma to grandma, but it stayed quiet because it wasn’t super sweet like new desserts we have today.
Enjoy your Holiday Wedges
– Cranby
