Scottish Shortbread
This was a dessert that made our list while perusing through my favorite dessert cookbook, Mom’s Best Desserts (see the post for New York Style Cheesecake for more information). This is not the last time we will use this book for recipes and/or inspiration for our weekly selection.
Shortbread is my kind of dessert! It’s buttery, crisp and soft at the same time, and just slightly sweet. It’s odd that I love baking desserts but don’t love super sweet treats (of course, plenty of others in our household love the “sweet enough to give you a cavity in the first bite” kind of sweet). Aubrey loves both the slightly sweet and the super sweet; she just loves desserts! Trying to be healthier the past two years forced me to give up my annual order of Girl Scout Shortbread Cookies so it was nice that this selection popped up on the calendar this weekend, right in the middle of Girl Scout cookie sales.
What makes shortbread a “shortbread” and what makes it “Scottish”? First, there are two explanations for the name shortbread. Some say it is named shortbread because it is “short” the eggs and leavening agents. Other explanations state that the “short” comes from the use of fat or shortening, in this case butter. (Probably the accurate explanation.) Shortbread is made with 3 staple ingredients: butter, sugar, and flour. Scottish shortbreads are crisper and tighter than other shortbread recipes with the use of cornstarch. Some recipes will use rice flour instead of the cornstarch to give the cookies a grainy, crumbly texture (which I want to try next time).
Interesting fact: Shortbread was classified as a “bread” to avoid paying the tax placed on biscuits. Also, had I known that January 6th is National Shortbread Day, we could have moved this item up a few weeks!
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups sifted unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 cup sifted confectioner’s sugar
- 1/2 cup cornstarch
- 1/4 tsp salt1 cup (2 sticks) butter, cut into small pieces
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Method
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar cornstarch, and salt.
- Using your fingers, blend the butter and vanilla into the flour mixture until fully absorbed. Shape the dough into a pancake, then knead or mix well for 10 minutes. (With an electric mixer, beat for 5 minutes.)
- Transfer dough to an ungreased 8- or 9- inch square baking pan, a 9-inch round pie plate, or a 9-inch pan with a removable bottom. Flatten the dough into an even layer. If the dough is too sticky to spread, refrigerate it for a few minutes first.
- With a knife, score the dough partway through and mark into rectangles or wedges. Prick the surface of the shortbread with a fork.
- Bake for 30 minutes, or until shortbread is light golden. Do not overbake.
- Cut into rectangles or wedges while still hot. Cool on a rack before removing from the pan. Makes 36 rectangles or 12 wedges.
Our Experience
We had a couple substitutions for this recipe. We used white whole wheat flour and whole wheat pastry flour in even amounts (mostly because we were running out of both) to replace the un-bleached all-purpose flour. The sugar was replaced by a 1:1 ratio of real confectioner’s sugar and powdered Truvia.
This was another short bake timewise which worked out well for us since we had some house cleaning to get done!! Since this was a one bowl recipe, we just measured the dry ingredients directly into the sifter and then sifted directly into the mixing bowl. We cut the cold butter into cubes, added the vanilla and butter to the dry ingredients, and let the mixer do the rest.
Maybe it’s lazy but for many things, the mixer does a much more thorough job than my hands could do…and it saves my arthritic joints a little wear and tear! Whenever we are cutting a fat into flour, like this recipe or biscuits or pie crust, we use the paddle attachment.
We didn’t really watch the time, we watched the bowl. First it got the crumbly texture that you would have gotten after several minutes of using a pastry blender. A few minutes more and it began to come together as a dough. We let the mixer go a minute or so after that took place and then pulled it out in one big, solid ball of dough. Easy peasy!
Once we took it out of the bowl, we just pushed all the crumbs together in a few quick kneads. Since the dough has so much butter, greasing the pan is unnecessary. We flattened the dough out on the counter a little bit first and then transferred it into the square baking pan. Using our fingers for the rest of it, we pushed the dough around to get it into the corners and then a little more to even it out.
Dividing the dough into servings and pricking the surface took longer than making the dough. I used a piece of wax paper that was the size of the pan and folded it to make an 8 x 4 grid. I then used that grid to mark the score lines. I still had to eyeball it as I cut the rest of the lines, but the guides helped to get them as even as possible without a great deal of work. Pricking the holes (which needs to be done to allow for steam to escape as the butter cooks otherwise they’ll puff up in some areas) ended up taking me the longest to complete. My kids will say it’s because I am “anal”, I like to think more of a perfectionist.
The instructions said to prick the dough with a fork but I thought they looked too irregular and, after spending so much time on trying to cut them evenly, it seemed like I was destroying them with the fork holes. So, I decided that a toothpick was much nicer and decided to prick each hole individually. I started with 18 holes and didn’t like that, then I had one with 15, and finally decided they looked best with 12.
by toothpicks and we experimented with how many and which number looked best.
We cooked them for the stated amount of time and they were a nice golden color on the edges and we decided they were done. As soon as we took them out of the oven, we used the lines that were scored before baking and cut all the way through the cookies. We let them cool for about an hour because that’s the most we could bring ourselves to wait. We were going to eat them whether they were ready or not.
along the edges too just to be sure they would come out nicely.
What we liked.
This recipe got a 5 out of 5, with Aubrey stating it tied with the cinnamon babka for the best thing we have made so far. These practically melted in your mouth. They were buttery and barely sweet…just as they should be. I love that shortbread is almost dry when you eat it (and yet it’s not), I think I appreciate the butter even more because of that.
This recipe was so easy to make with the use of the electric mixer that it left us wondering why we had never made shortbread before, considering it is one of our favorite cookies (me and Aubrey). These cookies will be added to our annual Christmas cookie list for sure. Mom’s Best.. cookbook is still on its streak of no bad recipes. We also liked that they were small and you could eat one without feeling really guilty. (Yeah, right, you can eat just one.)
We didn’t notice any adverse effects from using the Truvia or the different flours. The whole wheat may have even given it that grainy texture that some recipes use rice flour to achieve. If you love shortbread, I would highly recommend these cookies over the Girl Scout ones any day.
What we would change.
This is one of the few recipes that we have made that I wouldn’t change unless I wanted to experiment some more. We did discuss using all Truvia or a mixture of all sugar substitutes in a future batch. I would be up for trying some rice flour instead of the cornstarch to experience that texture to see if we prefer it. These cookies could have several spices added to them to create different flavors for instance adding some lemon zest, cinnamon, nutmeg, or even some savory spices. In my opinion, however, they need nothing else!
What we learned.
We didn’t “learn” baking techniques this week but we did learn that baking homemade shortbread is almost as easy as getting in the car and going to the grocery store to buy some. (We also learned that we don’t have as much willpower as we thought we did…good thing they’re small cookies!)
Until next week, Happy Baking!