3-Ingredient Buttery Shortbread Cookies (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between a butter cookie and a shortbread cookie? ›

As the name suggests a butter cookie has a high proportion of butter. However, unlike a shortbread the amount of flour and sugar used is increased meaning they hold their shape more effectively.

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.

"Shortbread" is just Scottish shortbread; they're one and the same. While the recipe has changed throughout its history, and there is a version of shortbread from Ireland, the original shortbread you're familiar with comes from Scotland.

If you don't have salted butter, unsalted butter will also work, simply add about ¼ teaspoon of salt to the cookie dough. The reason the salt is needed is because salt brings out the flavor in the cookies, without it, your cookies will taste bland.

Just like shortcake or shortcrust pastry, shortbread cookies get their “short” prefix because of the crumbly texture. The large amount of butter in the cookies makes them crumbly, while also giving them a nice buttery flavor.

Avoid making your shortbread too thick

This is much thicker than a roll-and-slice sugar cookie — or really any other popular type of cookie. If you keep your dough any thicker, you risk the dough coming out of the oven raw. If it's any thinner, the cookie will have a crispy texture with the snap of a graham cracker.

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

As Leiths also recommend chilling the dough before baking, although only for 15 minutes, I make another batch of their recipe with soft butter, stick it straight in the oven without passing the fridge, and end up with thinner, crunchier biscuits – presumably because the mixture spreads as the fat melts.

If it's too warm, the butter and sugar cannot properly cream and the cookies will taste dense. Many shortbread recipes call for cold butter worked into the dry ingredients and that gives you a wonderfully flaky cookie but if not mixed properly, the results can be inconsistent.

What happens if you don't poke holes in shortbread? ›

Why do you put fork holes in shortbread? Creating little holes in the top of the shortbread helps any moisture escape from the dough so it cooks more evenly, this also helps create the very 'short' texture of the biscuits. In baking terms, 'short' means crumbly with a melt-in-the-mouth texture.

But in this shortbread cookie recipe, it really makes a difference. Chilling the dough helps the cookies hold their shape. If you don't chill your shortbread dough, the cookies will spread as they bake.

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.

Shortbread is now Trefoils®! they're ABC cookies? always called them trefoils!

In British English, shortbread and shortcake were synonyms for several centuries, starting in the 1400s; both referred to the crisp, crumbly cookie-type baked good, rather than a softer cake.

To make a copycat version of Chessmen cookies at home, the recipe is a simple butter cookie cut out in a special shape. A butter cookie is slightly different from shortbread but with a higher ratio of sugar to butter. This allows a butter cookie to hold its shape rather than having a tendency to crumble.

In simple terms, shortbread is a type of cookie classified by its high butter content. It is named shortbread due to its short, or crumbly, structure—which is caused by the high proportion of fat. The traditional recipe, developed in Scotland, consists of one part sugar, two parts butter, and three parts flour.

Butter cookies, also known as Danish butter cookies, are cookies originating in Denmark consisting of butter, flour, and sugar. They are similar to shortbread cookies.

Butter cookies

They are especially popular around Christmastime and come in a variety of festive shapes, such as stars, trees, and reindeer. These cookies, often called Danish biscuits, originated in Denmark.