Coffee Shortbread With Many Options

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. In a mixer, cream the butter with the sugars and 2 TBLS. of the ground coffee. Mix at least 5 minutes. Scrape down the mixture from the sides of the mixing bowl.
2. Mix together the flour and salt, and add to the creamed butter and sugars in 4 parts. Scrape the bowl each time before you add more flour.
3. Gather up the dough and pat into a disk. Place on a floured surface, flour your rolling pin, and roll out dough to no less than 1/4" thick. Use a 2-inch round cookie cutter and with a thin spatula place the cookie rounds on an ungreased flat baking sheet.
4. Gather the dough, roll out again, and repeat Step 3.
5. Gather the dough again, and roll out the dough in a rough circle to 1/2-inch thickness. This time, treat as a pie, and cut slices with roughened edges that will naturally occur.
6. Place cookie sheets in the oven. The round cookies will be ready in approx. 15 to 17 minutes. The rustic pie-shaped shortbreads might take 17 to 20 minutes. Take cookies out of oven and immediately work on melting the chocolate.
7. Using Amanda and Merrill's method to melt the chocolate, microwave the semi-sweet chocolate and immediately stir in the hot coffee. Stir until the chocolate becomes ganache-like in consistency.
8. Now the fun part begins. Using an icing spatula, spread some of the ganache on the cookies. Then sprinkle the cookies with toasted coconut, or ground coffee, or both.
9. Note: You can use the white chocolate covered Marcona Almonds from a previous recipe I submitted for this contest to decorate, as well as any reheated leftover coffee-flavored melted white chocolate.