Whenever I think of my friend, Ellie, I think about how wonderful of a person she is. We have known each other since elementary school, became friends in middle school, sort of grew into different cliques in high school, but when we both went to college in Boston(her Boston College, me Boston University), our friendship just blossomed there. We would always be each others window back home while we lived in Boston, and we could rely on each other to keep ourselves grounded and provide an unbiased third party opinion whenever someone who we went to college with was being a royal pain. She is one of the most optimistic and hardworking people I know; even in high school, she was the only girl in our graduating class to get accepted into an Ivy League college(and she only turned it down because she got an insane scholarship at BC), and she actually worked full time in a managerial role while doing a full time MBA program at Northwestern. And the thing about Ellie is that she has this goofy, lighthearted, approachable side to her, so even though she accomplished all of these things, you don’t feel lesser-than or intimidated talking to her. In fact, she is so modest that she actually downplays her own accomplishments – it is one of her most admirable qualities in my opinion. Ellie recently got married back in August, and I was fortunate enough to be invited to her wedding. A while ago, she had gifted me with injeolmi powder(Korean grain mix) that her own grandma gifted her from South Korea, and I only felt like it was a full circle opportunity to make her shortbreads with that very same injeolmi powder! These buttery shortbreads are encrusted with Indian sugar crystals, just to give them a pleasant crunchy texture to add another level of sweetness to compliment the toasty flavor of the injeolmi. I am so grateful for my friendship with Ellie, and I cannot wait for the next time we are both in the same city(she lives in Chicago) so that we can act like no time has passed.

Makes 16-20 shortbread cookies:
For the dough:
3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup Injeolmi powder
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 stick unsalted butter
a pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg yolk

In a bowl, mix the flour, Injeolmi, sugar, butter, and salt until everything is combined into a sandy-textured dough. To that, mix in the vanilla and egg yolk to form your dough. Place your dough onto about a 15 inch-long strip of cling wrap and be sure to cover the entire dough in it. Roll the dough until it forms a log that is about a 12-inch long by 2-inch in diameter log of dough. Refrigerate the dough log for at least 1 hour. It should be completely solid.

For garnish:
1 1/2 cups Indian sugar crystals
1 egg white

Pour enough Indian sugar crystals to cover the bottom of a 12-inch long sheet tray. Remove your dough log and brush half of the exterior with egg white. Place that side down onto the Indian sugar crystals, and then brush the other side with more egg white. Roll the entire dough log into the crystals, making sure that everything is covered in it. Cut out 1/4 inch-thick disks from the dough and place onto a lined sheet tray, keeping each disk of dough about 2 inches apart from each other. Bake at 375 degrees F for 10 minutes. Allow the cookies to fully cool before removing from the sheet tray and transferring to an airtight container.