If you are looking for a wonderfully crunchy, buttery, easy Scottish Shortbread Cookie recipe you have come to the right place! I would say these taste just like Walkers Shortbread, but they are BETTER.
Shortbread Cookies Recipe
People love a short ingredient list. There are whole cooking shows and blogs dedicated to recipes with less than 5 ingredients. The thing is, less is not always ( or even often ) more when it comes to cooking.
New cooks in particular are enamored with a short ingredient list because they think the recipe is somehow easier because you are throwing fewer things in the bowl or pan. Often the opposite is true: the shorter the list, the more the execution of a recipe must be absolutely spot on.
It's like the old kitchen saying that the mark of an amazing cook is the ability to cook a fried egg perfectly. One ingredient. One! But to make the perfect fried egg, all aspects of the process must be mastered or you end up with a dry, rubbery mess.
For this reason, I avoided shortbread for a very long time. Three ingredients. Just three. Surely I would mess it up. Surely there was some trick that wasn't in the directions of the recipes I found. Surely it wasn't as easy as it looked.
I turned to the comments of roughly 20 recipes on the Internet for shortbread to help. They were filled with horror stories! Accusations of tastelessness, bland hockey pucks, sandy cookie bars, and worse were all over the internet, so I closed my laptop, went to the kitchen, and decided to wing it using
the basic formula for classic Scottish shortbread and the standard mixing practice for cookies:
4 : 2 : 1
Flour : Butter : Sugar
Cream butter and sugar, add dry ingredients and bake.
I figured, worst case scenario, I'd have something workable as a topping for a berry crumble or coffee cake if it all went horribly wrong. At best, I'd have a great starting point for tweaking the recipe.
Guess what, instead I got the BEST Scottish Shortbread Cookies ever!
As it turns out, there's not really anything to it other than that. I don't know what the Internet horror stories were all about, because this shortbread recipe really is as easy as the short ingredient list makes it seem.
Do you have to poke holes in shortbread cookies?
Yes! Poking holes in the cookies helps the moisture escape and the heat distribute evenly throughout the cookie. It is key to getting their perfect dense, crumbly texture.
If you like these shortbread cookies, you might also like:
Classic Shortbread Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 cups sifted flour
- 1 cup room temperature salted butter
- ½ cup white sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325°F.
- In a large bowl, beat 1 cup butter until it begins to turn lighter yellow. Add ½ cup sugar and beat together until well combined.
- Half a cup at a time, add the sifted flour to the creamed butter and sugar.
- After all of the flour is mixed in, the mixture will look like a coarse grain, crumbly sand or breadcrumbs. Do not expect this to form a classic "dough". Put the mixture in an ungreased 8 by 8 pan. ( I used my trusty old square Pyrex dish. )
- Press the mixture down into the pan. I used a large metal spatula place over sections of the pan, and pressed on top of that to make sure I got a more even bar.
- Using a skewer, lightly score (⅛th of an inch deep or so ) the top of the pressed dough to make 16 servings, then poke one row of holes down each scored bar. Make sure you poke straight through the dough and hit the bottom of the pan for each hole.
- Bake for 30 to 35 minutes. The bars will most likely be done around the 30 minute mark, but I saw that mine weren't browning yet by then, so I gave them 5 minutes extra. All of the butter makes these a fairly forgiving cookie, so unlike most cookies, don't be scared that 1 minute or 2 difference will ruin them.
- After baking time is up, remove pan from the oven and let cool for 1 hour.
- Cut each bar from the score marks and serve, wrap, or eat!
Habiba says
Is it white granulated sugar? Or caster sugar? Or icing/powdered/confectioners sugar?
Plz clarify. Thx.
basilandbubbly says
White granulated sugar is best. Enjoy!
Lynsey says
As long as he shortbread is hard and crunchy then you got it right! As a Scottish person that's how shortbread works!
Kari Anne says
Just made these for Christmas, and they are AMAZING! Just like the Walkers Shortbread we like! My dough wasn't super crumbly, certainly drier than a sugar cookie or something else, but it worked perfect!! I just went with it! I live In Vancouver BC, so we are very damp and humid here, and it worked like a charm. I also doubled the recipe into a 7x11 Pyrex, and it was awesome 🙂 This will be an annual tradition moving forward! Thanks! So easy!!! Making another batch today for neighbors and friends <3
basilandbubbly says
Oh I'm so happy to hear that! It's one of my all-time favorite recipes, and I LOVE that someone else has found it wonderful, too!
Anne says
you should mention that you need a very big bowl. I used a hand mixer and the dough went all over my kitchen. I also tried to make sit for five minutes and no coarse grain texture had formed
basilandbubbly says
Thanks! I just updated the recipe to start with a large bowl.
I wonder if a little more flour might have been necessary to get the right texture? I have never had to add extra, but I live in the Coastal Deep South of the USA so maybe my climate has something to do with it? I'll ask around and see if anyone else has had that same problem and see if we can find a good solution!
Tasha says
Loved these cookies, but definitely needed to add 1/2 cup of flour to this recipe. I baked mine in a mini muffin tin for individual cookies, filled half with peanut butter chips, and the other half topped with raspberry jam. Yum yum yum. I've been asked to make these over and over again. Only thing I'd change is the extra flour. It works without the flour, but doesn't produce the classic shortbread texture.
Nancy says
Just an change, my Mom was born in Scotland. I've made shortbread for over 60 yrs.
She always used extra fine sugar. Always delicious. Love your recipes.
Vanessa says
Thank you for your input.
Extra fine sugar as in confectioners sugar? 1/2 cup flour was recommended in a previous comment. Do you recommend this as well?
Lacey says
These are great, especially with a dab of apricot, cherry, or any preserves on top! I added a pinch of salt. 🙂