Shortbread Cookies Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What are the main ingredients in shortbread? ›

Put the flour, butter and sugar into a mixing bowl. Use your hands to combine the ingredients until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs, then squeeze until it comes together as a dough.

The most common mistakes when making shortbread are over-working the dough, and incorporating too much flour. The less you work the dough, the more crumbly and melt-in-your-mouth your shortbread cookies will be.

Bake the shortbread until it's a light golden brown across the top surface and a deeper golden brown around the edges, about 35 minutes. Remove the shortbread from the oven and turn it out of the pans and onto a clean work surface.

Takeaway: look for recipes that use granulated sugar for a more crisp-style shortbread and powdered sugar for a more tender shortbread!

Cornstarch provides the shortbread with structure, but its biggest job is keeping the cookies extra soft, tender, and light. I love adding a small amount to chocolate chip cookies too. Optional Coarse Sugar Topping: For an optional sparkly crunch on your shortbread wedges, add a sprinkle of coarse sugar before baking.

Traditional Scottish shortbread is a simple recipe made with sugar, butter, flour, and salt. Other shortbread styles will include leavening agents like baking powder and baking soda, which makes them crisp instead of crumbly like traditional Scottish shortbread.

Shortbread or shortie is a traditional Scottish biscuit usually made from one part white sugar, two parts butter, and three to four parts plain wheat flour.

Roll out the shortbread dough.

Note: if the dough is too soft at this point then wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 10-15 minutes or longer until it firms up slightly and makes it easier to roll out. Keep an eye on it as if the dough is too hard, it will crack when you try to roll it out.

After shaping the cookies, don't rush to the oven! Instead, chill the dough in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or so (overnight is OK, too). A short stay in the fridge will firm up the cookies and solidify the butter. This will help keep them from spreading too much.

What happens if you put too much butter in cookies? - Quora. They spread way too far out on the cookie sheet and don't get cooked right. They're too wet, and really greasy, but can be cooked to crispiness but won't have the right texture and it will be hard to reproduce the time of baking.

Why poke holes in shortbread? ›

The word "bread" comes from "biscuit bread" which was made from leftover bread dough that was sweetened and dried out in the oven to make biscuits. Why do you poke holes in shortbread? The holes allow the moisture to escape during baking and more even heat distribution. This helps dry out and crisp up the cookies.

Begin checking at the tail end of the cooking time. Undercooked shortbread will be doughy and chewy. Slightly overcooked and it will become chalky, brittle and hard.

The inside of the cookie is undercooked but the outside is cooked. This is going to be rather scattershot, since underbaked can mean anything from raw to slightly soft, depending on the baker. If they're really gooey and don't set when cooled, you probably just need to bake them a few minutes longer.

Cut the shortbread with a knife while it's still warm. It can stay in the pan for several hours (and even overnight) after this point, but it's important to cut it while it's warm. I find the shortbread to be even better on day two.

Should butter be cold or room temperature for making shortbread? Always start with cold butter straight from the refrigerator. This will keep the dough from warming up, making it greasy and difficult to roll out.

Good shortbread is pale, buttery, crunchy, and 'short'. This means it crumbles at every bite, giving that characteristic shortbread texture. It shouldn't be soft or chewy like cookies, and it shouldn't be browned.

So if you hear the term "Scottish shortbread," you might think it's a different version of the shortbread you're familiar with, right? Well ... actually, no. "Shortbread" is just Scottish shortbread; they're one and the same.

Start with a teaspoon of fat and mix your dough well. If the dough is still falling apart, you can keep adding more in small increments. And at the end of the day, you can always add a little bit of water as well if your shortbread still hasn't formed a cohesive dough.