Shortbread Cookie Recipe | Shortbread Recipe | Scottish Shortbread Biscuits

Shortbread cookie recipe with step by step pictures. These Scottish shortbread cookies made with three simple ingredients, butter, flour, and sugar are a scrumptious treat and so simple to make! With the Holidays around the corner, you really don’t need a reason to bake these crispy, buttery shortbread cookies. So let’s learn how to make this Scottish classic!

Our journey continues from Sweden’s thumbprint cookies to Austria’s Linzer cookies, and now to Scotland with these shortbread biscuits or Scottish butter cookies. And with that, I’m winding up my list of cookies for this year. I hadn’t really planned on it, but I realized that I ended up making cookies from three different countries this Holiday! I hope you enjoyed these eggless treats.

What is shortbread?

Shortbread is a crisp, crumbly, buttery Scottish cookie. Traditional Scottish shortbread recipe calls for 1 part of sugar, two parts of butter, and three parts of flour, by weight. It is also known as 1 2 3 shortbread or 2 4 6 shortbread. The former number simply represents the ratio of the ingredients while the latter represents the weights, i.e 2 oz, 4 oz, and 6 oz of sugar, butter, and flour respectively.

Ever since I’ve tasted Walkers shortbread cookies I’ve been in love with shortbread. They use just 4 ingredients ie. flour, sugar, butter, and salt and no preservatives at all. Pretty clean for a commercial product (not sponsored)!

Walkers cookies remind me of the slice and bake Indian shortbread cookies minus the flavorings and also the popular Nankhatai, that’s made with chickpea flour, semolina, and ghee. Because there is no additional flavoring used in Scottish butter shortbread cookies you can really taste all that rich buttery goodness. But instead of making plain shortbread cookies I added some pure vanilla extract to make some vanilla shortbread biscuits.

And that’s how I always thought a biscuit, or rather a cookie, was supposed to be. The classic American chocolate chip cookie, or snickerdoodle and other soft and chewy cookies are not something that I grew up eating. I enjoy them though, and make a batch or two at home since the kids love them and devour them like crazy!

HOW TO MAKE SHORTBREAD COOKIES?

There are 2 ways you can go about making shortbread. In the traditional method, you mix the dry ingredients i.e. flour and sugar and work the butter into the dry mix with your fingers until the butter is well incorporated with the flour. To make things easier, you can pulse the ingredients in a food processor until it forms a dough that leaves the sides.

The other method is creaming the butter and sugar and then adding the flour. And that’s the one I’ve followed today. I like doing the traditional method if I’m making some sort of bars like lemon bars or millionaire’s shortbread.

The key point to remember in both the methods is to avoid overworking the dough. Over-kneading the dough results in gluten formation, which will cause these cookies to be less crumbly, thereby ruining the texture of a shortbread, which is what you want to avoid!

And that’s why flours like cornstarch or rice flour have become popular choices to add that tender and crunchy characteristic to these biscuits.

Shortbread comes in various shapes. They can be shaped using the traditional wooden mold or pressed in a round pan, and cut into triangles or pressed into a rectangular or square pan to make finger-shaped cookies. The triangle shaped shortbread are called “petticoat tails”.

Once you are done with the dough and shaping all that is left to do is to bake these biscuits! You should keep an eye on the baking time as you don’t want the cookies to turn brown. They should be pale in color. The longer you bake them, apart from the darker color, they will turn a tad too crispy and loose that light crunch. You want the shortbread to have a lightly crisp bite and then just crumble in your mouth.

I made chocolate covered shortbread and sprinkled some pistachio for a festive flair. I also ended up making Christmas shortbread cookies with the scraps with these cute Christmas theme mini cutters that I got last week. They made for a nice bite-sized cookie.

My homemade ones were just as comparable with the popular brand of shortbread cookies, except for the added vanilla flour, the texture in terms of crispness and crumbliness was spot on!

It is really easy to make a shortbread cookie recipe from scratch, you don’t really need a shortbread mix! So try and include these easy homemade shortbread cookies this Holidays. They are great for your cookie exchange as well 🙂

And before we move on to the recipe, here is a fun fact: January 6th is celebrated as National Shortbread Day 🙂

ENJOYED THESE RICH SHORTBREAD BISCUITS? THEN DO CHECK OUT THESE EASY EGGLESS COOKIE RECIPES TOO,

• Eggless Bourbon biscuits
• Eggless badam pista biscuits, Karachi bakery style
• Coconut cookies
• Nankhatai (Indian shortbread cookies)
• Swedish Thumbprint cookies
• Linzer Cookies

STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS TO MAKE THE PERFECT SHORTBREAD COOKIE | EASY SHORTBREAD RECIPE

1.Place butter in the bowl of your stand mixer (you can use your hand mixer or a whisk too), sift in powdered sugar, beat on low heat initially, until the powdered sugar is mixed with the butter, then increase the speed to medium and beat until light and creamy.

2.Add vanilla extract and beat for another 30 seconds. I used clear vanilla extract coz that is what I had.

3.Now switch to the lowest speed and add the flour in parts. Gently bring the dough together, avoid overworking the dough. If you press the dough between your palms it should hold its shape. If the dough feels too dry and crumbly, add a teaspoon of milk or more as required just until the dough comes together.

4.Divide the dough into two parts. Place a cling wrap on the work surface, transfer one part of the dough over the plastic wrap and shape it into square or a round disc, about 1 inch thick and wrap in the cling film. Refrigerate it for 30 minutes.

5.Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with Silpat or parchment paper. Take one part of the dough, roll it out between two parchment or wax papers to 1/4 inch in thickness.

For the finger-shaped cookies: Snip off the edges to make a neat rectangle or square. Score the shortbread dough to make finger shapes. Indent the cookies with a fork or skewer.

For the round or other shaped cookies: Use your favorite cookie cutter, and make cut-out after rolling out the dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Gather the scraps, form a disc, refrigerate for another 15 minutes, reroll and make more cutouts.

6.Lay the cookies on the sheet at least 2 inches apart (If the cookie dough seems too soft at this stage, place the tray with the cutouts in the refrigerator for another 30 minutes. This prevents the cookies from spreading too much while baking). Bake for about 15 minutes or until the edges begin to turn golden brown. Do not let the cookies turn brown. Smaller shaped cookies will take less time to bake, so keep an eye. Remove the baking sheet from the oven. Let the cookies stand on the baking sheet for about 2 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and let them cool completely.

7.For chocolate covered shortbread: Place the chocolate chips or chunks along with the butter in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave on high power in 30-second intervals, stirring with a clean, dry spoon after each interval. It took me a total of 1 & 1./2 minute to melt the chocolate chunks. Keep stirring to make it smooth and glossy.

8.Dip one end of a cookie in the melted chocolate, shake off excess, sprinkle pistachio pieces and place on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Repeat the same with the rest of the cookies.

9.Place the tray in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes or until the chocolate hardens and firms up. Store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

NOTES

• Shortbread without icing sugar (shortbread recipe with granulated sugar): Substitute the powdered sugar with 1/2 cup granulated sugar. 
• Shortbread with rice flour and icing sugar: Substitute 1/4 cup of flour with rice flour and use the same amount of powdered sugar and other ingredients mentioned in the recipe.
• Shortbread cookies with cornstarch: Substitute 1/4 cup of flour with cornstarch or custard powder.
• Alternately, you can gently press the shortbread dough in an 8-inch square pan lined with parchment paper or a 9-inch springform pan or a fluted tart pan. Smooth the surface out. Score the dough into triangles or finger shapes, and prick with a fork all over. Bake until shortbread is a light golden in color and cooked through, may take around 30-40 minutes. Then cut the warm shortbread along the scored lines. Transfer on to a cooling rack after 5 minutes, and let it cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

Variations

There are so many possible variations with this easy shortbread cookie recipe.

• Shortbread cookies with jam: These are the same as the shortbread thumbprint cookies I shared earlier, you can find the recipe here.
• Shortbread flavor ideas: You can flavor up your basic shortbread recipe with flavors like dried lavender, saffron, pistachio, almond, citrus like lemon or orange zest, chai spice, matcha, cardamom, peppermint etc You can also add in chocolate chips, chocolate chunks or nuts like walnuts, pecans, cashew nuts or dried fruits like cranberries, raisins, apricots etc.
• Savory shortbread: Of course you can make some awesome savory shortbread as well. Bacon, dried herbs, caraway seeds (which was traditionally used in shortbread) are yummy options. You may cut back on the sugar to reduce the sweetness in the cookies.
• Festive shortbread: Make differently shaped shortbread, such as heart-shaped, reindeer, snowman, snowflake, Christmas tree, stars, egg-shaped etc. for various occasions or make some embossed shortbread cookies with one of those fancy stamps.

★ Did you enjoy this shortbread cookie recipe? If you happen to try it out, I would love to hear from you! I’d appreciate it if you could rate and leave a review below in the comments. Your reviews help others know the recipe better too. Thanks so much 🙂 

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