The perfect shortbread can be quite elusive. Read our essential guide and try our classic recipe – you could discover a new family favourite!
Table of Contents
Shortbread – Tips For Success
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. How do you achieve this kind of perfection?
It can be difficult to consistently make good Shortbread, even using the same recipe. That’s because shortbread’s texture depends on your mood and the kitchen temperature. This very Sensitive Dough doesn’t like to be handled too much. But that’s not to say that you should be folding and incorporating air – rather, you should be trying to work the mixture as little as possible to keep it cool and ‘short’.
There are two main things that can go wrong with the shortbread dough (before it’s cooked): first, overworking the dough will put the flour’s gluten (proteins) into action. Gluten is what stretches out and makes chewy bread or cookies – and you definitely don’t want it working on your shortbread.
Secondly, getting the butter too warm (because of your hands or kitchen temperature) or breaking it up too much will prevent the shortbread from forming those crumbly layers. Aim for some smaller (breadcrumb sized) and some larger (think oat-sized) pieces of butter. These should melt in the oven, not the bowl, creating air pockets that give a light, crumbly finish.
When cooking, it’s vital not to overcook shortbread. As it contains no eggs, the dough requires very little cooking and you certainly don’t need to brown it. Cook until just tinged with gold at the edges and your shortbread will finish cooking on the rack.
Remember the two keys to success: keep the dough cool (open a kitchen window), and work in the butter gently and swiftly.
You Need:
250g unsalted butter (choose the best quality butter that you can find)
225g plain flour
2tbsp cornflour
125g icing sugar, sifted
Pinch of salt
Sift the Flours and Sugar together with the salt into a large bowl or food processor. Cut the butter into small pieces and drop them in, then, using a wooden spoon, plastic blade or pastry cutter, combine everything until it starts to come together.
Preheat the oven temperature to 170 degrees C. Turn the mixture onto a lightly-floured board and knead very gently until it comes together to form a dough. Roll it to about 1cm thick and cut out rounds or shapes. Transfer to a cool baking tray. Use a fork to prick each round once.
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Note: If you don’t want to roll and cut the biscuits, roll the dough into a 5cm diameter log and put into the fridge for half an hour, then use a warm knife to cut slices. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until the biscuits are just beginning to get a golden tinge at the edges. Cool on a wire rack thoroughly before dusting with icing sugar to serve.
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.
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.
It's important to avoid over-mixing shortbread dough, which will develop gluten and make the finished product tough, not tender. To make sure that the flour mixes completely with little effort, sift the flour first to get out all of the lumps.
Shortbread should always have a tender, melting texture, but be slightly crisp when you bite into it. It should not generally be damp or wet underneath. A classic shortbread recipe will also only have flour, butter and sugar as the ingredients (in a 3:2:1 ratio) and not egg, which could lead to excess moisture.
It comes from using a high proportion of fat (or shortening) to flour and is also where shortcrust pastry gets its name. Why do you put shortbread in the fridge before baking? Chilling the dough before baking will help the shortbread keep their shape while cooking.
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 has a much higher ratio of butter to flour and this is precisely what gives it that distinct melt-in-your-mouth texture. These proportions make shortbread a lot more dense compared to cookies, which means you could easily end up with shortbread that's hard and crunchy rather than buttery and crumbly.
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.
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.
Since you will be cooking your shortbread in the lower third of the oven, you will get some top browning as the cookie bakes. The surface of the shortbread should be a toasty light brown when it is cooked. It should never appear raw or slightly opaque in the middle.
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.
Light colored cookies with dark speckles typically indicates that the cookies are underbaked. You can stick the stone back in the oven for another few minutes and they should finish baking.
Introduction: My name is Kerri Lueilwitz, I am a courageous, gentle, quaint, thankful, outstanding, brave, vast person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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