Bacon and Cheddar Shortbread

With the boyfriend in Dallas, I have no one to take care of pajamas (I know I am not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition, but I didn't really know what else to say, so I just tacked a noun on the end).  So when my mom said she needed to come up with an appetizer to bring to her friend's party, I stuck my nose in and insisted that I would do it for her and began to rattle off all the delicious things I could make.  She cut me off.  The party is 45 minutes away: my appetizer could not be hot.  Crap.  Feeling like Robert Irvine, but without all the muscles and lies, I began to furiously wrack my brain.  This is what I came up with, adapted from here.

Many of the cookies had much more visible bacon chunks,
but mom had already packed them up for the party.  Oh well.

Bacon and Cheddar Shortbread
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1/4 cup sugar
2 sticks butter, room temperature
1/2 cup shredded cheddar (I actually used cheddar jack because it's what we happened to have around)
6 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 tablespoon fresh chives
  sea salt for sprinkling (should be in large-ish chunks that you can clearly see, but wouldn't hate to bite into)

1. Preheat oven to 350 F, move racks to top two positions.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, cornstarch, and salt.  Add cornmeal and whisk until everything is blended.
3. Using an electric or stand mixer, beat together butter and sugar until very smooth.
4. Add dry ingredients and mix until blended and a ball of dough (not just small pebbles) forms.
5. Fold in cheese, bacon, and chives-- the dough is stiff, so a wooden spoon will work better than a spatula.
6. Form a ball with the dough.  Place the dough in a large plastic bag.  Roll out dough to 1/4" (if necessary, split into two bags-- you must get the dough to the right thickness now, because it will be too hard later).
7. Refrigerate dough at least 2 hours.
8. Remove dough from fridge and plastic bag.
9. Line two cookie sheets with parchment and spray with cooking spray.
10. Cut dough into squares, or use your favorite cookie cutter, and place on the baking sheet.
11. Using a fork, prick holes all the way to the bottom (if you're doing squares, just prick in a grid patter in the middle.  I did stars, so I pricked once for each point of the star).
12. Sprinkle each cookie with a little bit of sea salt and press it lightly into the dough.
13. Put cookies in the oven and immediately decrease temperature to 300 F.
14. Bake cookies 25-30 minutes or until slightly golden and firm, rotating trays half way through.
15. Remove from oven, cool completely on wire racks.