Avoiding cracks in the shortbread cookie dough

• The best way to avoid your cookie dough from cracking as you form the holes in them is by making the holes as soon as the balls are shaped. This literally means you should form one cookie ball, place it in the paper casing, and use the back of your wooden spoon to make the hole. And then repeat the process with the next dough ball.
• If you form all the balls first and then make the holes at all one go, you will end up with a lot of cracks. This is simply because the dough balls kind of like set after you form them and leave them aside. As you press them to make the holes in the center a bit later, they will crack.
• Having said that, cracks are not totally avoidable, you will still end up having some even if you follow my steps above. But you will also notice that as the mango cookies bake, they will puff up a little and that helps to close tiny cracks in them.

Butter should be soft but firm, and not melted

• For best results, when mixing the dough, make sure your butter is solid and only soft to the extent you are able to press your finger into it. It should not be any softer and should never ever be too soft that it does not hold shape. Too soft a butter or melted butter will not work for this mango shortbread cookies as your cookie dough will turn greasy, and your cookies will lose their crumbly, melt in the mouth texture.

Use granulated sugar or icing sugar

• These mango cookies are best made with either granulated sugar or icing sugar (powdered sugar). Coarse sugar can also be used, but your cookies will end up with specks of the sugar granules visible on them after baking.
• In the mango cookies recipe card below, I have indicated granulated sugar. If you are going to use icing sugar (powdered sugar), please note to use a kitchen scale to measure the sugar. This is because 1 cup of granulated sugar does not weigh the same on a kitchen scale as 1 cup of powdered sugar and your cookies will end up not tasting as good as they should.

Do not over mix or knead the dough

• There are 2 ways in which you can mix this mango cookie dough. The first method, which is the classic way of making shortbread cookies is to rub the butter into the flour until it turns crumbly and then adding the sugar to it.
• The second method is the creaming method. With this method, you cream the butter and sugar until it's creamy (but not too light and fluffy) and then add the flour to it.
• Either way, once all the 3 ingredients are combined, the dough would still be crumbly until you start pressing it together. This is an important point for shortbread cookies. You should only press the crumbs together to form a dough and nothing more than that. If you work the dough too much, your shortbread cookies will lose the soft crumbly texture and you will end up with shortbread cookies that are slightly chewier.

Baking time

• The baking time indicated in the recipe below is just nice for the size of my mango cookies, which is at 1 tablespoon each. If you make larger sized cookies, your baking time would need to be increased.
• If you make the mango cookies of the same size but flatter, your baking time would need to be reduced slightly.