Glace Cherry Shortbread (2024)

Everyone loves shortbread! Simple and rustic, but never meant to be boring, my Glace Cherry Shortbread is perfectly beautiful and scrumptiously delicious!

Shortbread. What else is there to say? Everyone loves it. Well, I’m about to kick plain old shortbread up a notch with glace cherries – Glace Cherry Shortbread is on the menu today!

My love for glace cherries most certainly wasn’t a lifelong affair. Until last Christmas, I had never even dared try one! (Even though my mom used to bake with them often.) Blogging about food has forced me to try new foods so that I can provide an array of recipe options to you, Dear Reader. Yes, that’s right; I took one for the team!

To me, there was just something extremely unappealing about these brightly coloured cherries floating in a sticky, sugary syrup. I blame much of that point of view on both my mom and dad. Back in my early teen years, they both worked at a large industrial food plant which produced glace cherries, along with a million types of vinegars and pie fillings. When they came home from work, the stench would follow. Imagine being trapped in a factory with millions of gallons of vinegars being boiled all day long. The smell was disturbing to say the least.

My mom would bring home large buckets of pie fillings, and of course, red and green glace cherries. I’m not sure what she did with them all, but she kept bringing them home.

And my dad, well, he worked in the vinegar part of the plant. So, yes, you guess it; he brought home vinegars. I remember the glass bottles of vinegar looked like wine. They were never used, or even opened for that matter, but he brought them home anyway.

I wish I was a foodie way back then. I could have put those cherries and vinegars to good use. I’m pretty sure I would have let the pre-made pie fillings fall by the wayside though. They were never, and are not, something I purchase often (with the exception of pumpkin!)

Now, shortbread, however, is one of my favourite Christmas treats. I tend to make my own shortbread every holiday season, but during the summertime, I often crave it and resort to purchasing a package of Walkers Shortbread, which is available worldwide – it’s the best thing to homemade that you can possible get! #walkersshortbread

I read that shortbread originated in Scotland in the mid-1700s, and was first printed in recipe form by a Scotswoman named Mrs. McLintock. Who can argue with a recipe that old which is still being used today?