Shortbread Cookies

About 150 miles north of Edinburgh is the village of Methlick, a small community of about 540 people in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. There’s one main road with a church, a school, an inn, and a tiny store—it’s the kind of place where everyone greets each other by name. Surrounded by farmland and rolling hills, the town is where you’ll find what is unequivocally the best shortbread in the world. Each bite is rich and buttery, with a tender, crumbly texture that melts in your mouth. Across the top is a generous dusting of golden sugar that glints in the sunlight, as if it were inviting you to please take a bite. You won’t find the shortbread in a café or a shop. It’s only available in the kitchen of a feisty, charming 85-year-old woman named Evelyn Cook, my husband’s grandmother. But lucky me—and now lucky you—I have the recipe for Evelyn’s magical shortbread and I’m sharing it here. 

It was the smell of this shortbread that greeted us when we stepped into her home last March. I followed the aroma to the kitchen, where a freshly made batch, barely out of the oven, was cooling in its pan. I was ravenous after the long drive up from Edinburgh and I eyed the shortbread greedily, eagerly waiting for it to become cool enough to eat.

My first bite tasted as good as it smelled. Though I’d eaten shortbread many times before, I’d never had one that captured my attention the way this one did. It was the platonic ideal of what shortbread should be: It wasn’t too sweet and somehow managed to be both crisp and tender at the same time. I detected slight nutty undertones from what was, I learned later, whole wheat flour. I rarely ever taste something so delicious that I feel the need to recreate it at home, but I was determined to leave with the shortbread recipe in hand.

Evelyn, who insists that her grandchildren call her Gaga, has been making shortbread for 50 years. When I asked for the recipe, she rattled off a list of ingredients and measurements with the kind of familiarity that only comes from making the same recipe for years and years, over and over again, until it’s simply ingrained in your head. The recipe, she says, originally came from my husband’s great-great aunt Mary, and it’s the one she’s made ever since. 

When I returned home to New York, I was delighted to see an email from Gaga with the recipe. It’s a wonderfully easy one that barely requires more than a bowl. All you have to do is whisk together the flour, sugar, cornstarch, and salt, pour an ungodly amount of melted butter over it, and gently press to form a cohesive dough before transferring it to a 9- by 13-inch baking sheet, smoothing it out, and baking until lightly golden. There’s no stand mixer involved and no rolling and chilling necessary. In other words, it’s the easiest shortbread ever—and it’s Scottish grandma approved.

The Origins of Shortbread

Shortbread hails from Scotland. According to food historian Alan Davidson, editor of The Oxford Companion to Food, the baked good can be traced back to 16th century Britain, when bakers made “short cakes,” a rich pastry with eggs and leavened with yeast that eventually evolved into different kinds of biscuits enjoyed throughout the U.K. today. “The original Scottish shortbread is simply a thick layer of rich, sweetened shortcrust pastry, without any extra flavorings,” he writes in the book. “The classic proportions of ingredients for a shortbread recipe are one part sugar to two of butter and three of flour,” which results in the biscuit’s signature short, crumbly texture.

Traditionally, bakers prepared shortbread by pressing it into a decorated wooden mold. Though it’s eaten year-round now, it has historically been associated with Yuletide. Writing in the New York Times in 1977, Ann Barry notes that on New Year’s Day, early visitors—called “first-footers”—would bring shortbread with them; the baked good was supposed to be kept whole until the evening feast: ”If it remained whole, unbroken prosperity would be assured in the household for the next year; if it crumbled before then, hopes of good fortune were dashed.”

At one point, shortbread also served as a wedding cake in rural Scotland. Florence Marian McNeill, author of The Scots Kitchen, notes that the “mester-hoosal,” or the master of ceremonies, would smash “infar cake,” a shortened oatcake, over the bride’s head in her new home as a kind of house-warming custom. Today, shortbread is eaten throughout the United Kingdom and often enjoyed with a cup of tea.

Bakers—especially Scots—have many strong feelings about what makes the best shortbread. Some make their shortbread by creaming butter and sugar; some shape the biscuits into individual portions before baking; some dock the dough before baking to prevent uneven rising. And some, like Gaga, bake it in a large mold and portion after. Shortbread can be a very personal thing. As Barry wrote in the New York Times: “If one is fortunate enough to sample homemade shortbread with a group of Scots, the matter of what is and is not shortbread may, nonetheless, be open to heated debate.” 

Butter Is Your Friend for the Best Shortbread

With so few ingredients, most of shortbread’s flavor comes from the dairy you use. I recommend using good quality butter with a substantial amount of butterfat. At 82 to 85% butterfat, European-style butter contains more fat than the 80% butterfat of most American butters. My personal favorite is Kerrygold’s unsalted butter, which has 82% butterfat and comes from grass-fed cows. (Because pasture-raised cows eat a more varied diet, their milk is often more complex-tasting, and I like to use it in shortbread, where the flavor of the butter really shines through.) I’ve made this recipe with both European-style butter and American butter; while the version made with European-style butter is ever so slightly richer, the shortbread with American butter was still excellent—and if all you have access to is American butter, you’ll still get very good shortbread.

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 which the butter and sugar melt,” she notes. As cookies bake, the air pockets “begin to swell with steam, a gentle upward draft that helps to hold the dough aloft. When the cookie finally sets, the air’s footprint forms its crumb.” 

Gaga’s method of using melted butter, though, is simpler—and foolproof. As former Serious Eats editor Kristina Razon wrote in her guide to softening butter, the task isn’t as simple as just making butter pliable. "The exact temperature of your softened butter," she says, "can influence how doughs and batters form and can have a make-or-break impact on the final results." By using melted butter, there’s no time spent wondering if the butter is the right temperature or consistency. Even better, there’s no faffing about with a stand or hand  mixer.  

In addition to lending the biscuit its flavor, butter also contributes to the confection’s “shortness,” the crumbly texture you’ll find in certain tart doughs and cookies like shortbread. Using plenty of butter ensures that fat evenly coats all the dry ingredients, limiting the development of gluten and keeping the biscuit tender. You’re not mistaken—there is, indeed, a full pound of butter in this shortbread. But it’s absolutely necessary for the rich texture that is so quintessential to good shortbread.

Why You Should Use Whole Wheat Flour for Flavorful Shortbread

Another thing that distinguishes Gaga’s recipe from many others is its use of whole wheat flour in conjunction with regular all-purpose flour or, in the U.K., plain flour. Whole wheat flours contain both the bran and germ; because they have flavorful oils, they typically have a more nuanced flavor than its all-purpose counterpart. 

In the U.S., most whole wheat flours come from red wheat; in this recipe, I opt for whole wheat flour milled from white wheat.To be clear: white whole wheat flour doesn’t refer to the color of the flour, but rather the type of wheat from which it’s made, which has the same brownish shade and a similarly rustic texture to other whole wheat flours.  It has a slightly lower protein content (about 12%) compared to standard whole wheat flour (about 13%), which helps keep the shortbread tender while still bringing a subtle earthiness. (Flours with a higher protein content tend to develop more gluten, which can result in a tougher, chewier cookie.) If you can’t find white whole wheat flour, you can use a whole wheat made from red wheat—it’ll still be delicious, just not quite as “short.

Mix in Some Cornstarch for the Tenderest Shortbread

In addition to all-purpose flour and whole wheat flour, you’ll notice there’s a hefty amount of cornstarch in Gaga’s recipe. Bakers often add the ingredient to their baked goods to “soften” the proteins in the flour, a process food science writer Harold McGee describes as diluting the gluten proteins. “Because different flours have not only different protein contents, but different protein qualities, it’s not really possible to turn all-purpose flour into pastry flour or vice versa,” he writes in his book On Food and Cooking. “However, it’s possible to dilute the gluten proteins of a given flour by the addition of cornstarch or another pure starch,” which encourages tenderness. It’s why many home cooks combine all-purpose flour with cornstarch to approximate pastry flour when they don’t have any on hand. 

Incorporating cornstarch into the shortbread dough is an easy way to reduce the overall gluten in the dough and, together with the hefty amount of melted butter, produces incredibly short cookies that melt in your mouth. And it’s why I’m not afraid to knead the dough a little—albeit gently!—to get it to come together or firmly press it into the pan. There are so many safeguards in place to ensure that this shortbread will stay tender, it’s nearly impossible to mess up, even if you’re a novice baker.

Note that some bakers, including Gaga, sometimes use rice flour in place of cornstarch in their shortbread for a more brittle texture. I’ve tried it both ways, and  while shortbread made with rice flour is delicious my husband and I both prefer the version with cornstarch since it produces a softer crumb, while the version with rice flour is slightly crispier.

Selecting the Sugar

Caster sugar is what the Brits call superfine sugar. It dissolves easily and has a sandy texture that’s finer than granulated sugar but coarser than icing sugar, making it a good in-between for baking and other confections. Gaga’s recipe originally called for regular caster sugar, but here, I’ve opted for golden caster sugar, which is unrefined and has a subtle butterscotch note. It’s a personal preference, and regular caster sugar or superfine sugar will work just fine. You can find golden caster sugar online, at British grocery stores, or specialty baking stores.

Making, Baking, and Shaping the Dough

Once you have the simple ingredients gathered together, there’s really not much to making this shortbread: You’ll whisk the dry ingredients together in a large bowl, then pour melted butter over the dry ingredients, then gently—but firmly—use your hands to knead until a cohesive dough forms. You’ll then press the dough into a rimmed baking sheet and smooth it out until it’s an even layer before popping it into the oven to bake.

Cutting and Serving the Shortbread

It’s easiest to cut the shortbread into portions in the pan while it’s still warm—if you wait until it’s cool, it’s likely to crumble apart. After you cut the cookies, you’ll sprinkle the tops with more caster sugar. While not all recipes call for sprinkling sugar on the shortbread when it comes out of the oven, I—like Gaga—love the slight crunch it gives the cookies.

And now you’ve reached the hardest part of the recipe: waiting for the shortbread to cool for an agonizing hour. Yes, an hour! This time is required for the shortbread to cool and set. In the meantime, you can enjoy the smell of cookies (or biscuits, if you’re from the U.K.) throughout your home. Baking a batch of this shortbread may not add a Gaga to your family—or transport you to Scotland—but it’s about as close as you can get.