Encouraging the sunny weather with a bright orange zest mascarpone cream, crumbly pistachio shortbread and fresh strawberries. # 254: Sunny Mascarpone Shortbread Bars

Happy Spring! Sadly found out this week that I have Covid, so I’ll be curled up inside with a plate full of these shortbread bars for the foreseeable future.

I needed something to make me smile and these have all my favorite non-chocolate things: pistachios, mascarpone whipped cream, orange, strawberries and shortbread.

Shout out to an extra hour of daylight! I still missed the best light (oops), but looking forward to summer evening bakes.

As this was a comfort bake, I went back to my favorite shortbread recipe. You can find the ingredients list in my Checkerboard Shortbread post!

Small bake + room temp butter = creaming the butter and sugar by hand. So satisfying.

Pistachio gems hidden in the sand.

If you’re using ceramic instead of metal, increase the baking time! My batch in the ceramic tin was a tad underbaked, thanks to better insulation. Think of the metal tin as the hare and the ceramic as the tortoise. Both win as long as you pay attention!

The metal tin conducts heat better and gifted me some golden crisp edges.

I was hoping for a flatter piping tip to make a squiggly wave of cream on top of each one, but apparently that’s the one tip I don’t have! Made do with the small oval tip.

Whisk some room temperature mascarpone, sugar, orange zest and heavy cream til stiff peaks. Try not to eat it all before it goes into the piping bag.

Mint if you’re feeling fancy!

And sprinkles. Because we deserve them.

Which one would you go for first?

Happy munching!