For the Love of Dirt: ISHBELL's SHORTBREAD ...

Friday, November 21, 2025

ISHBELL's SHORTBREAD ...

She was my mother's best friend. For always and forever. She was a talented artist. She had a family. She laughed and believed in the goodness of people. She loved my mother, and my mother counted her as her best friend. My mother fondly called her "Ishbell". She knew my dad. After he was gone, she told me how "Davy" as one in a million, about his generosity and kindness. I only knew him for a short while. Ishbell made him come alive.

My mother was godmother to her daughter, Marie, who became one of my best friends, my "god sister". To this day, Marie and I share a unique bond with each other, a friendship that has lasted through thick and thin. Ishbell gave my mother her the recipe for shortbread one year. Mum made it every year, squishing the tops with silver dragees, then filling up the glass cookie jar with the sugar showered rounds. I used to sneak them at midnight knocking off the silver dragees into the sink, pretending they were marbles...

ISHBELL's SHORTBREAD ( updated with plant butter)

1 pound plant butter (you can use butter), 1 cup brown sugar, 3 3/4 cups flour ( maybe a tad more to get the right consistency of dough)

"Christmas is the day that holds all time together..." -Alexander Smith

Beat the softened plant butter with the brown sugar till combined like pudding.

Add the flour and combine like pastry.

My mother and Ishbell were so good for each other. So good for us. She spent many Christmas evenings at our house, by the fire, listening to me dutifully scraping away at carols on the violin, then playing the same ones on the piano. "Wonderful, dear," she'd say encouragingly, no matter how I sounded.

Combine dough well, and press into an ungreased, lined, cookie sheet. I used foil, because I ran out of parchment paper. Works just as well.

Bake at 325 for about 12 minutes, for the first half of baking.

Score the hot shortbread into rectangles, or squares. Place back into oven and bake till brown and baked through. About another 8 or 9 minutes. I just keep an eye on it and lift up a piece to see if it's baked through.

It was always exciting when Ishbell and her family came over. She told stories with my mother, sipped sherry, and munched on fruitcake and shortbread.

Lovely, sweet lady. I can still see her,in later years, long after mum was gone, surrounded by paintings, drawings, sketches, cards, and wonder. She was full of wonder and grace. She still called me "dear". I can still hear her soft voice saying "Wonderful, dear..". But she was the dear one, for always and ever....