Disneyland's Chocolate Dipped Shortbread Cookie Recipe

Disneyland does something I find extremely wonderful - they share their famous recipes! All you have to do is go to City Hall on Main Street and ask - they will pull out binders full of them for you, you can pretty much find any of your favorite Disneyland recipes there! For free too! 

One of our family favorites is shortbread cookies, and I was surprised at the ease of Disneyland's shortbread cookie recipe - it's only 3 ingredients (well without the chocolate), that's about as easy as cookie making gets! If you are looking to do something fun with your kiddos I highly recommend baking with them, and this super simple recipe is a good way to ease into it. (I started baking with Liam when he was only one, and by now he's pretty good at it!) Here is the recipe:

2 cups softened butter

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

5 cups all purpose flour

8 oz. semi sweet chocolate, melted

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Continue to beat until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add flour and mix well. Roll into 1 inch balls and press down onto cookie sheet. Bake 18 minutes or until light brown. When cool, dip half the cookie into the melted chocolate.

Enjoy!

Your pal, 

Mickey Mouse

 *A few notes about baking:* 
- I used unsalted butter, because the recipe didn't specify, but then added a couple pinches of salt. 
- The ingredient amounts seemed pretty large, so I only made a half recipe and it was still a very good amount of cookies (3 trays of assorted sized cookies).
- My dough didn't come together, it looked like a bowl of crumbs, so I added a tablespoon of water at a time and mixed in between until it started to come together a bit and become more moldable. 
- I obviously didn't follow the part about rolling the dough into 1 inch balls - I figured if I'm going to make a Disneyland cookie, I'm going to make it a little more "Disney". I rolled the dough on a floured surface and used my Mickey Mouse cookie cutter. It was perfect for the occasion, but it makes a very big cookie, so I only cut out a few of them and made smaller cookies with the rest of the dough.
- To melt the chocolate (chips) I put the chocolate into a microwave safe bowl, microwaved it for about 20 seconds, stirred, and repeated until it was smooth.
- Since the cookies were too big to dip in the chocolate, it worked fine to spread them with a frosting knife (some cookies I left plain, too).
- I decided to try a little variation and mixed mini chocolate chips into half of the dough, and it also made very tasty cookies, without the work of melting and spreading chocolate.

 These cookies turned out absolutely, perfectly and delicious! My kids, who are not picky, adored them - especially the giant Mickey ears cookies; and my husband, who is picky about his desserts, said they were the best treat he'd had in a while! I highly recommend you try this recipe with your kids and put a little Disney magic into your weekly routine.
Click here for Disneyland's amazing Snickerdoodle recipe.
(I couldn't resist trying out my Idaho and Mountain Bluebird cookie cutters too!)

Read more from Jessica on her blog, Idahome. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, or on Instagram at @jesshner.