Skille Almond Shortbread Recipe | Brown Sugar Food Blog (2024)

FAQs

What is the trick to shortbread? ›

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.

Confectioner's sugar.

This is the secret to the tender texture and perfect sweetness of these cookies.

It has quite a powerful buttery, toasted oat flavor for such a simple, delicate little cookie. Sugar affects both flavor and texture, so it's particularly fun to experiment with. Substitute light brown sugar for the granulated and the shortbread gets all caramel-y and slightly chewy from the molasses in the sugar.

Piercing the shortbread with a fork is not only for decoration, but it's meant for more even baking. Poking holes in the shortbread allows the heat to penetrate the cookie, hence more even baking. Notice I'm using powdered sugar here. You'll see lots of shortbread recipes using granulated sugar.

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.

Traditional shortbread recipes are 1 part sugar, 2 parts butter, and 3 parts flour.

Chill the shaped dough thoroughly before baking. Cut the shortbread while it is still warm, for smooth, even slices.

The word "bread" comes from "biscuit bread" which was made from leftover bread dough that was sweetened and dried out in the oven to make biscuits. Why do you poke holes in shortbread? The holes allow the moisture to escape during baking and more even heat distribution. This helps dry out and crisp up the cookies.

Since you will be cooking your shortbread in the lower third of the oven, you will get some top browning as the cookie bakes. The surface of the shortbread should be a toasty light brown when it is cooked. It should never appear raw or slightly opaque in the middle.

What is the best flour substitute in shortbread? ›

RICE FLOUR: This recipe makes shortbread that's tender enough as it is so you don't need rice flour. You can use it if you want - the difference is marginal. Just swap out ¼ cup of the flour with rice flour, add it with the flour. Some recipes say you can use cornstarch/cornflour as well.

Undercooked shortbread will be doughy and chewy. Slightly overcooked and it will become chalky, brittle and hard. Is shortbread supposed to be soft when it comes out of the oven? Yes, upon cooling it will firm up.

It comes from using a high proportion of fat (or shortening) to flour and is also where shortcrust pastry gets its name. Why do you put shortbread in the fridge before baking? Chilling the dough before baking will help the shortbread keep their shape while cooking.

BSA works great in recipes that include confectioners' sugar as a baking ingredient, like this tender Classic Scottish Shortbread.

One thing that always signals Christmas to me is shortbread. This is one of the simplest cookies you can make – just one part sugar to two parts butter to three parts flour by weight (plus some salt) – and it tastes better as it ages, so it's a great candidate for baking ahead of time.

Chill the dough in the refrigerator for at least 20 minutes. Chilling the dough will help the cookies hold their shape while baking. While the cookies are in the refrigerator preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Line a half baking sheet with parchment paper.

Make a roll of the dough using parchment paper and put in 'fridge for 30 minutes. Unwrap and slice into rounds. Cooling will cause dough to stick together and prevent crumbling. Shortbread like pie crust and biscuit dough isn't like bread dough.

Shortbread is so named because of its crumbly texture (from an old meaning of the word "short", as opposed to "long", or stretchy). The cause of this texture is its high fat content, provided by the butter. The short or crumbly texture is a result of the fat inhibiting the formation of long protein (gluten) strands.

Over-mixing adds too much air to the batter. As the biscuits bake, the air in the dough expands and spreads. Should butter be cold or room temperature for making shortbread? Always start with cold butter straight from the refrigerator.