Shortbread Recipe – Not Traditional, Just Good
After Thanksgiving this year, my cousin noted how much our family loves food. If you’ve read the last few travel posts of mine, you’ll have plenty of confirmation of this fact. I feel like food is all I write about lately, so I want to change that. But before I do, I promised a few people I’d give up my recipe for Shortbread.
Firstly, I’d like to state that this is not a traditional shortbread recipe, but it works for me and is really easy to prepare. I’ve done recipes where you need to grind white sugar in the food processor, and they were OK, but there’s none of that here. I do have a little optional twist that would require a food processor, but this is entirely optional.
A word about butter. For shortbread, the butter is everything. If you have a favorite, use that, but consider getting some good quality whipping cream and making your own. Most people would laugh here, but I promise it is really easy, quick, and makes a big difference in the final product. If you’re interested, continue to step one, if not, skip to step two. Fair enough? Good. Let’s get going.
- Pour 1 pint of heavy whipping cream in a food processor and let-er rip. Run it at a good clip and you will see it turn into whipped cream. While this is delicious, this is not what we’re after, so be patient. After some time, you will see the whipped cream start to climb, then fall apart and separate into buttermilk (yay) and butter (double yay). Let this run a bit more and stop the processor. Pour off the buttermilk and keep this for fried chicken or cornbread and you’ll want to make it all the time. It is completely different than store bought. Take the butter that remains and ball it together (it’s OK to use your hands. You washed them right?) Place this in a bowl, march over to the sink, and rinse the butter with cold water, kneading it in. Continue this until the water runs clean. (If you skip this step, your butter will go bad fairly quickly). You can add salt to the butter at this point, but I don’t. This should yield about 14 ounces of creamy goodness. You will need to add two tablespoons of butter to bring this to 1 pound for step two. Congratulations, you just made butter without breaking a sweat.
- It’s all greased from here. Turn your oven on to 300 degrees.
- Cream together 1 pound of butter, 1 cup of brown sugar, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt (I like kosher). If you are feeling particularly saucy, you can add a 1/2 teaspoon of your favorite extract (almond, mint, vaniller, whatever floats your boat) but they don’t need it.
- Mix in 4 cups of flour, 1 cup at a time until it’s all in there. That’s it. That’s the recipe. You can use a cookie press (way, way not traditional), or press it into a pan (preferably round) to a thickness of about 1/4 inch.
- Bake in the oven (duh).
Now. Raise your right hand. Place your left hand on your favorite cookbook and repeat after me.
I, <state your name>, do solemnly swear, to check the cookies after ten minutes, but not before. I promise that I will remove the cookies when they are just slightly brown at the edges, lest they become overdone.
OK, seriously, you have to watch these guys. I refuse to give a definite time to cook them, because it will be different for different thicknesses, altitudes, attitudes, latitudes, and butterflies flapping their wings in China. You need to be the judge. Scary. They cookies will get a flat finish on the top, and the edges at the very base of the cookie will be a very slight brown. If the brown gets too far up, they won’t be as good. (Don’t stress too much, they will still be good.)
Have a cookie on me and let me know what you think. Now, a little traditional music from Julie Fowlis to make up for my shortbread heathenry.
Next few posts will be food free, I promise. I have other things on my mind.
