Home-made Shortbread
Shortbread is one of my go-to recipes if I want to take something to share at a party, or I want an edible gift for someone. The recipe is really simple, I always have the ingredients on hand, and you can cut shapes that will hold up well after baking.
Shortbread keeps well in an airtight tin, and it doesn’t need the trans fats and preservatives that commercial cookies often have. You could use vegetable margarine, but the texture won’t be quite the same, and it’s really the good quality butter that gives home-made shortbread its great taste.
I’ve tried several different recipes, but this is the one I always come back to – it’s off the side of the rice flour packet that I buy when I’m home in Aus!
Ingredients
Makes around 4 dozen small cookies
225g All-purpose flour
115g Brown rice flour
115g Caster sugar
225g Butter, chilled
Pinch of salt
1. Measure dry ingredients into a large bowl and loosely stir together. Preheat oven to 175°C/350°F.
2. Grate the butter coarsely into the bowl, dipping into the flour every so often to keep it from sticking to the grater and your hands. Work the butter into the dry ingredients just until a dough is formed, do not overwork or allow the butter to get too soft.
3. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to desired thickness and cut shapes with cookie cutters or a sharp knife. Sprinkle with extra sugar if desired.
4. Bake on cookie sheets for around 12 minutes or until just turning golden. Rotate trays halfway through to ensure even baking. Slide onto wire racks and allow to cool completely before storing.
Notes:
The size of the shapes will affect cooking time, so make them roughly the same or bake different shapes on separate trays. Thickness is also important so be sure to roll the dough evenly.
Stars or hearts make great festive gifts, place a few in a cellophane bag and tie up with ribbon. I used to do this every year for my colleagues at Christmas.
Rice flour is readily available in Australia but I found it more difficult to get hold of here in London. I finally tracked it down at a health food store.
If you’re making shortbread on a very warm day you may need to rest the dough in the fridge for a while before rolling. Think of it as pastry – it doesn’t like being warm!
Flavoured Shortbread
You can easily flavour this recipe by adding one of the following to the dry ingredients at the beginning:
- 1 tbs grated lemon zest
- 1 tbs grated orange zest
- 1 tsp almond essence
- 1 tbs clean lavender buds (yes really!)
Let me know if you try this recipe, especially the flavoured shortbread, and have fun making your own junk food!
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This sounds really good! I’ve been wanting to find a really good shortbread recipe, do you have conversions for US measurements?
Yes, US conversions would be great. And, I don’t know what Caster sugar is. Looking forward to trying this!
I found this: Castor or caster sugar is the name of a very fine sugar in Britain, so named because the grains are small enough to fit though a sugar “caster” or sprinkler. It is sold as “superfine” sugar in the United States.
Because of its fineness, it dissolves more quickly than regular white sugar, and so is especially useful in meringues and cold liquids. It is not as fine as confectioner’s sugar, which has been crushed mechanically (and generally mixed with a little starch to keep it from clumping).
If you don’t have any castor sugar on hand, you can make your own by grinding granulated sugar for a couple of minutes in a food processor (this also produces sugar dust, so let it settle for a few moments before opening the food processor).
I think the conversions would be as follows:
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup brown-rice flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup butter
You may want to double-check those, but I think those should be correct!
Laura, thanks so much for adding that! In the US it’s sold as powdered sugar usually, but I’ve seen super fine too.
Yummy. I love shortbread. If you want to change it up, you can add chopped pecans, roll them into a ball, and roll them in powdered sugar when they come out of the oven for a Mexican wedding cookie.
I used the US measurements that that Laura provided and YES they are correct! I added a tad more butter for good measure!
But I bet it didn’t even need it! They came out EXACTLY like the picture above! If i could I would show you the pictures I took on my phone. They came out super yummy! I made them for a Tea Party Bridal Shower last weekend and everyone commented on cute they were! Not too many people make shortbread so a few people thought they were sugar cookies, and were shocked to find out they were shortbread!
Thank you so much for sharing the picture and the recipe I’ll be using for the rest of my life!
Oh! one more thing! I used C&H Ultra Fine Bakers Sugar instead of confectioner sugar. Has a wonderful texture!
Mo thanks so much for the input on your recipes.
L–