Week 6 - Shortbread (Page 44)

Hello, everyone! Welcome to week 6 of our bake through! This week our recipe to tackle was Shortbread and honestly, I’m glad it was an easy recipe.

To skip my babble and get to the food, click here.

To jump to the photos, click here.

To skip all my babble and get to the conclusion, click here.

Check out Jenn's post of this cookie here!

It’s been a busy week for me and as I’m typing this, I only have use of one hand to type with because I aggravated an old injury. All is well. It will heal. However, I may need to ask for your forgiveness in advance as I feel there will be a delay for my post next week but we’ll address that when the time comes.

In the meantime, I’m likely going to keep this short to give my arm a break and also to give you guys a break. The posts have been relatively long recently so I’ll make my post a quick read. I strongly suggest you check out Jenn’s post. She did some awesome experiments with this recipe but I won’t give you any hints here!

Now, on to the good stuff - the Shortbread cookies!

Shortbread Cookies - The original recipe

Shortbread. Such a simple recipe with a short list of basic ingredients yet I’ve only come across one recipe that was delicious. And it was made by someone very special, my one and only Nanny (not her name or occupation. Just an endearing term for her because she takes such good care of everyone and everything around her ❤️). Otherwise, all the Shortbread I’ve come across has been dry, flavourless or has left a strange film on my palate likely from cheaper substitutes for butter. But, not this recipe!

My process, notes and observations:

The Shortbread dough is very simple to make.
The Shortbread dough definitely needed to be kneaded by hand to incorporate all the flour my mixer wasn’t strong enough to evenly mix and distribute. There was a fair amount of flour and butter packed into the bottom of the bowl I had to scrape out. It should be noted that I baby my mixer because they’re expensive and I don’t want to push it. When it starts to sound like it’s struggling I tend to take over the hard work.
The Shortbread came together very nicely and the warmth of my hand definitely helped it a bit (my kitchen runs cold). I made sure not to knead the dough any more than I needed to as I didn’t want to overwork the dough.
I made good use of my ruler, bench scraper, rolling pin and slicer. The ruler was used to measure 2.25” and 1.5” apart as Keller instructs. The bench scraper was used to indent the dough lightly so I knew where to cut. The rolling pin for the obvious and the slicer because I wanted to be able to slice across the dough in one go.
It bothered me when the edges weren’t straight so I cut them off and went from there. I plan on baking the dough scraps next week, possibly as Shortbread sticks (:
I poured the sugar over the cookies and used my hands to distribute it evenly, patting every so often because I was afraid the sugar wouldn’t stick after baking. The residual sugar from the bake is saved for the next batch of Shortbread.
The cookies were baked with the convection setting because I was in a bit of a rush and didn’t have time to try both. Keller’s timing for a convection oven bake is 13-15 minutes versus a 17-19 minute bake for a standard oven setting. My cookies took 18 minutes in a convection oven and were perfectly baked (unanimous opinion, not just my own) so either his timing is off or my oven is off. It’s quite possible that it’s the latter. I see an oven thermometer in my near future.
The cookies are very lightly browned when they’re ready. Against my natural habit to bake things until I *know* they’re done (simply by adding five extra minutes beyond when I think something is done), I took the cookies out when they were barely browned. So glad I did.
I baked the cookies straight from the fridge.

I had quite a few guinea pigs this week including E and N, the youngins who wanted to be part of this weeks blog.

Our conclusions:

Me: The cookies held their shape well after baking and surprisingly, the sugar held on as well! The Shortbread was delicious. Jenn baked these ahead of me and told me they were really good but man, these cookies are *really* good. I’m not usually a Shortbread cookie fan but these were buttery and crumbly but not dry. The sugar on top made them perfectly sweet and the granules gave it an awesome, different crunch. I’m definitely adding these cookies to the “keep” list and definitely going to experiment with other flavours.
H: Shortbread decadence! While the thought of “how much butter is in this?” fleets ever so quickly across the mind, the party on the palate was long lasting. Just the right level of sweetness and the perfect texture of cookie - a perfect shortbread cookie!
E: The cookie was good. Most Shortbread cookies are too dry, bland and gummy. However, this cookie was light, airy and very flavourful.
N: Usually, when I eat Shortbread cookies, they’re chewy. Chewy like, it takes too much time to chew but these ones were so good. They broke in your mouth. They belonged in your mouth. The flavours stay there and they just swirl in your mouth.

Left/Top: Cookie straight on.

Middle: Cookie from the side to show thickness. I wanted my cookies extra sugary so that's the little blown out white layer on top of the cookie. I like it. It looks like the cookie has a halo 😋

Right/Bottom: Cookie straight on again (:

TL;DR Conclusion:

The Shortbread was super yums on all fronts! Not a bad thing to say about them from anyone! Just make sure not to over bake them and it'll all be fine.

Thanks for reading! Can't wait for week 7!