Scottish Shortbread

Before Hawaii: a story and recipe from The Baking Wizard! These buttery Crunchy/tender cookies owe their deliciousness to the quality of the butter.

These buttery crunchy/tender cookies, made only from flour, butter, and sugar, owe their deliciousness to the quality of the butter. So be sure to use the best you can find.

Note about Butters

Fortunately, many European Style butters are available in our supermarkets: Plugra, Kerry Gold, and Strauss, for example, and they have higher butterfat contents (85 percent in some cases) than conventional brands such as Land O'Lakes (80 percent). And what the butter tastes like depends on what the cows were eating.

Baking Thoughts and Tips

Cammie Mitchell Hinshaw, a member of our family, is a third generation Scot who learned how to make classic Scottish Shortbread from her grandmother, Gertrude. And now Cammie has taught me what she learned. To make the dough, Cammie says, “My grandmother mashed the sugar into the butter—salted, not unsalted—with her hands, then worked in the flour.” Cammie also mixes the dough by hand, squishing all the ingredients together in a large bowl until they gather into a firm mass. Many shortbread recipes substitute rice flour for a portion of the wheat flour to give the cookies a tender crunch. I like what rice flour does, so I added some. Here’s where you can read more about rice flour and British Shortbread.

Just for the heck of it, I decided to mix the dough with a stand mixer fitted with the flat beater to see what would happen. Here’s the recipe. I’m giving weights and cup measurements. And I’ve included salt because I used unsalted butter. Omit it if using salted butter. When baked thick, shortbread’s texture is decidedly different compared with thinner versions. Cammie rolls out her shortbread dough ¼-inch-thick and stamps out cookies. Her shortbread is crunchy. I wanted a shortbread that had a range of textures, and I reasoned that I'd be able to achieve that with a thicker shortbread. Often shortbread is baked in special molds or in pie plates. I used a 9-inch one made of ovenproof glass. The bottom diameter of my plate is 7 inches—perfect for shortbread that is ¾-inch-thick. When freshly baked, thick shortbread is tender and slightly chewy, with just a hint of crunch. You can actually eat it on a plate with a fork. Serve with hot tea.