EASY Shortbread Cookie Recipe - I Heart Naptime (2024)

FAQs

What are common mistakes when making shortbread? ›

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.

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.

Due to differing ratios, shortbread cookies are crumblier and more "sandy" than butter cookies, which are firm and solid enough to be iced. This mostly has to do with flour and eggs. Shortbread doesn't use eggs, while butter cookies do, making butter cookie dough more pliable and robust than its shortbread counterpart.

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.

Confectioner's sugar.

This is the secret to the tender texture and perfect sweetness of these cookies.

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.

-Chill unbaked shortbread cookies in the fridge for 30 minutes prior to baking in a 350 degree oven for 12-18 minutes.

Piercing the shortbread with a fork is not only for decoration, but it's meant for more even baking. Poking holes in the shortbread allows the heat to penetrate the cookie, hence more even baking. Notice I'm using powdered sugar here. You'll see lots of shortbread recipes using granulated sugar.

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.

Shortbread is similar to shortcake but doesn't include baking powder. Lots of rich butter gives shortbread a high fat content, resulting in a fine, crumbly texture. Shortcake and shortbread biscuits are delicious on their own, with fruit and cream, or simply topped with a delicate dusting of sugar.

What did shortbread Girl Scout cookies used to be called? ›

Trefoils were also the first Girl Scout Cookie back in 1935, when the Girl Scout Federation of Greater New York raised enough money through the sale of commercially baked cookies to buy it's own die in the shape of a trefoil.

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.

Fine Cooking explains that the butter should be at refrigerator temperature. While many cookie recipes call for softened butter or at room temperature, if your butter isn't cold when making shortbread, it's likely to turn out greasy or be difficult to roll out.

An excessive amount of butter makes it where the flour is unable to absorb the combined fat, which causes the cookie to spread too widely and the sugar to carbonize more easily because it's surrounded by too buttery a dough.

Shortbread Crust: Lightly butter, or spray with a non stick vegetable spray, an 8 or 9 inch (20-23 cm) tart pan with a removable bottom.