Chocolate Chunk Shortbread Cookie Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to making good shortbread cookies? ›

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.

Compared to butter cookies, shortbread uses a higher ratio of butter to flour, and is baked at a lower temperature. This gives it its signature delicate consistency that crumbles in the mouth when bitten. It's also often baked in a pan and cut up after baking, rather than being cut into shapes before baking.

The main difference between these two cookies is the ingredients and the ratios of the ingredients. Sugar cookies typically contain eggs, while shortbread cookies do not. Shortbread also has a higher ratio of butter to flour and are usually more crumbly and tender as a result.

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.

The key with shortbread is not to overhandle it. Make the dough exactly as instructed, but don't mess around making shapes or over rolling the dough - you will end up with delicious but tough biscuits. Stretching and pulling the dough activates the gluten in the flour, making chewy cookies and not crisp ones.

ABC Bakers - Did you hear the news?! Shortbread is now Trefoils®! | Facebook.

Shortbread isn't a bread, it's what we Americans call a cookie.

The related word "shortening" refers to any fat that may be added to produce a "short" (crumbly) texture. In British English, shortbread and shortcake were synonyms for several centuries, starting in the 1400s; both referred to the crisp, crumbly cookie-type baked good, rather than a softer cake.

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.

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.

Unsalted butter for best results

Use unsalted butter for balanced flavour. Unsalted butter was traditionally used in baking because it was a superior product to salted - salt is used as a preservative so unsalted butter was thought to be fresher.

Chill Before Baking

The goal is to ensure the butter in the dough is cold when it goes into the oven. This will prevent the shortbread from spreading.

Should I chill my shortbread dough? My recipe doesn't require chilling but I can tell you that it will make a difference in the texture of the cookie. The cookies bake up softer and lighter in color if the dough has been refrigerated for at least 30 minutes to 1 hour before baking.

The high butter quantity in shortbread (one part sugar to two parts butter) gives it that delightfully crumbly feel. And also its name.

Many shortbread recipes start by having you cream softened butter with sugar, incorporating the dough with what former Serious Eats editor Stella Parks describes as “micro pockets of air.” Because air is a poor conductor of heat, “it helps insulate the dough from the hot baking sheet in the oven, slowing the rate at ...

And once you have cut out or shaped your dough make sure you chill it for at least 30 minutes before baking so that the butter can re-solidify before reaching the heat of the oven.

Butter is an emulsifier and it makes cookies tender. It also adds in the crispy-around-the-edges element. Adding too much butter can cause the cookies to be flat and greasy. Adding too little butter can cause the cookies to be tough and crumbly.

Irish Shortbread Is Distinct From Scottish Shortbread

As cornstarch is a potent thickener relative to flour, this creates a denser cookie. Whichever version of shortbread you prefer, though, the original -- which is often just called "shortbread" -- came from Scotland.