Shortbread (Regular and Chocolate)
Is shortbread the quickest and easiest sweet snack or WHAT?! Cheap, quick and no fuss. And so incredibly tasty. Here are the recipes for both regular and chocolate (or cocoa to be exact) shortbread.
Not just for Christmas
You may have read my blog post on making a “rule” to only eat snacks that I made myself. What I made when I first decided that was shortbread, and for two very good reasons; it’s 1. quick and 2. yummy as hell.
Shortbread was traditionally associated with big life events like christenings, weddings and Christmas family gatherings, according to the most famous shortbread brand Walker’s, but are now more and more common to have at any time of year. However, as I’m writing this right before Christmas, it does feel like the absolutely perfect time to have them - they’re perfect with a cup of tea on a chilly day, and a great snack to make quickly for when you have family coming over.
This is a great snack to get kids involved in, or just to do as a nice family or friend activity. You need absolutely no equipment other than a bowl, and just a bit of patience and the willingness to get your hands a bit dirty. Once you’ve tried making these once, it’ll be a super safe go-to recipe that you’ll probably be able to remember without even having to return to this site for the instructions.
I wanted to try to make a chocolate version too. I found quite a few chocolate shortbread recipes online, but they all seemed quite complicated. I thought, surely, just replacing a bit of the flour with some cocoa would do the trick? I have tried both 20g and 30g, and I’d say both work but more than 30g would be pushing it and possibly get a bit too dry. But the cocoa does create lovely, light and chocolatey shortbread. You don’t need to make it more complicated than that!
So here are two shortbread recipes, I always make one of each and bake them together - highly recommended. Enjoy - whatever time of year you’re doing this!
Regular Shortbread
150g plain flour
100g cold butter, cubed
50g sugar
Chocolate Shortbread
120-130g plain flour
Replace 20-30g of the flour with cocoa powder (so make sure you have a total of 150g flour+cocoa)
100g cold butter, cubed
50g sugar
Making shortbread is honestly sooo wonderfully easy. Chuck all the ingredients in a bowl (you don’t even have to wait for the butter to soften!) and start mixing it together with your hands. Have faith, it feels like it’ll be too dry at first, but eventually you’ll get a lovely, slightly sticky ball of dough. You can do just one of these (regular/chocolate), or as I always do, one of each at the same time. When you’ve worked the dough into a smooth ball, put it in the fridge to cool (important!) for 15-20 minutes.
Take the dough out of the fridge and preheat your oven to 170ºC (150ºC fan heated), about 340ºF. Roll out the dough with a rolling pin (this will be quite tough to begin with as the dough is cold, but it’s important that it is, otherwise it’ll get too runny in the oven!) until it’s about 1/2 cm in thickness. Cut into fingers with a plastic utensil, or use a glass or cookie cutters to make desired shapes. Bake on a lined baking tray for about 15 minutes (all ovens are different!) and take out and let them cool. Letting the biscuits cool is important as they will be very fragile when they first come out but will harden to the perfect texture after a little while, so handle them carefully!
You can do more festive or indulgent versions by sprinkling with sugar or even drizzling some white chocolate over them, you can add a bit of ground ginger to the mix or really, do whatever you want to do to mix up this recipe. I’d love to see your results, so post on Instagram and tag me!
