White Chocolate Chip Cherry Shortbread Cookies recipe (2024)

FAQs

Should shortbread cookies be soft or hard? ›

Shortbread should always have a tender, melting texture, but be slightly crisp when you bite into it. It should not generally be damp or wet underneath. A classic shortbread recipe will also only have flour, butter and sugar as the ingredients (in a 3:2:1 ratio) and not egg, which could lead to excess moisture.

As the name suggests a butter cookie has a high proportion of butter. However, unlike a shortbread the amount of flour and sugar used is increased meaning they hold their shape more effectively.

When you're mixing the dough, be sure to do it only long enough for all of the ingredients to be combined with no pockets of dry flour. If the dough starts to crack when you bring it together, it's also a sign to put it in the fridge to let the gluten slack.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

What happens if you put too much butter in shortbread? ›

Greasy mess: Extra butter means more fat, making the dough greasy and difficult to handle. Spreading like crazy: Cookies lose their shape, spreading thin and flat instead of staying nice and round. Uneven baking: The excess fat can burn easily on the edges while leaving the center undercooked.

Instead, chill the dough in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or so (overnight is OK, too). A short stay in the fridge will firm up the cookies and solidify the butter. This will help keep them from spreading too much. Also, it helps concentrate those flavors for your best ever shortbread.

If it's too warm, the butter and sugar cannot properly cream and the cookies will taste dense. Many shortbread recipes call for cold butter worked into the dry ingredients and that gives you a wonderfully flaky cookie but if not mixed properly, the results can be inconsistent.

Not necessarily. Refrigeration for 30 minutes with any cookie helps hold the shape, but it's not necessary with this particular shortbread recipe. If you're concerned there is not enough flour, causing these to spread and loose their shape, then by all means refrigerate first, then bake.

In that role, white sugar aerates the dough when creamed with butter for thick and puffy cookies. Brown sugar, meanwhile, is dense and compacts easily, creating fewer air pockets during creaming—that means that there's less opportunity to entrap gas, creating cookies that rise less and spread more.

Shortbread has a much higher ratio of butter to flour and this is precisely what gives it that distinct melt-in-your-mouth texture. These proportions make shortbread a lot more dense compared to cookies, which means you could easily end up with shortbread that's hard and crunchy rather than buttery and crumbly.

The dough before cooking will be a creme-yellow colour, have a soft and smooth (slightly floury) kind of texture and as it bakes it will hold the colour. The longer it cooks the darker it will get, sort of caramelising the sugars contained in the dough.

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.

Why are my shortbread cookies too soft? Shortbread contains a high amount of butter, so if you find your shortbread too soft, try chilling the cookies before baking. This will allow the butter to harden.