Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 8x8 or 9x9 inch square baking pan. You can also use a round cake can and cut the shortbread into triangles. Nuts: Any type of chopped nuts can be added to your shortbread mix. Lightly toasted or raw nuts as per your preference, chop them up coarsely for even distribution throughout the dough. Examples you might like are walnuts, pecan, pistachio, almonds, hazelnuts and sesame seeds. Brown, Catherine (2015-04-01). "Shortbread". The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-931362-4. ...not all shortbread is made with white flour. On Orkney, where a tasty Neolithic barley known as "bere" is still grown and milled, bakers add a little of this flour to their shortbread. Others add rolled oats to provide more flavour and texture.

The ginger is a great tasting ginger. It's not a namby pamby ginger, meaning it's hardly got any taste. This has taste in spades. Modern recipes also often deviate from the original by splitting the sugar into equal parts granulated and icing sugar and many add a portion of salt. Shortbread has been attributed to Mary, Queen of Scots, who in the mid-16th century was said to be very fond of Petticoat Tails, a thin, crisp, buttery shortbread originally flavoured with caraway seeds. Good job they have a good BBD on them, sometime next year as it may take a while to eat them all...........Or not the way hubster and daughter are eyeing them up!Bake time:Use the recommended time in the recipe but my biggest tip is to go by sight. Buttery and 'short', or crisp. I like my shortbread soft and buttery so bake them the minimum time stated. But if you'd prefer yours on the crisper side then leave them in the oven for a couple of minutes longer. Historic UK - heritage of Britain accommodation guide. "Scottish Shortbread". Historic-uk.com . Retrieved 2010-11-24. The bites themselves are very cheesy, too much for me. However, the two cheese eaters of the family find these really nice and more-ish. A box disappeared before my eyes while writing this review.

Emma Kay, A History of British Baking: From Blood Bread to Bake-Off (Pen & Sword, 2020) pp. 113–114. "Despite the endless citations linking Mary Queen of Scots with 'Petticoat tails', I cannot find any legitimate or authentic links with shortbread and its conception in Scotland. Admittedly, during the 1700s it was the predominant country of manufacture, but not solely and certainly not the first to." Timothy G. Roufs & Kathleen Smyth Roufs, Sweet Treats around the World: An Encyclopedia of Food and Culture (Santa Barbara, 2014), p. 290. Hyslop, Leah. "Potted histories: shortbread". The Telegraph. No.6 October 2013 . Retrieved 18 February 2014. Be sure to measure flour correctly! All of my recipes are tested using the spoon and level method (more info through that link). Too much flour and cookie dough won’t hold together.Cut into shortbread rounds or fingers and place onto a baking tray. Sprinkle with caster sugar and chill in the fridge for 20 minutes. There are many different recipes and regional variations for shortbread. The following recipe uses rice flour to give a slightly grainy texture: I'm a bit 'off' with dark chocolate at the min, but this is a decent chocolate, not the cheap oily sort. Citrus: Orange, lemon, lime and grapefruit are incredible flavours to add to your shortbread. Do this through the zest, and top tip - make sure to rub the zest into the sugar to release the oils in the zest. Then carry on and cream the sugar and butter as per the instructions. You get maximum flavour this way.

cup (120 grams) caster sugar , or "baker's sugar" in the U.S. (if you can't find any simply pulse granulated sugar in a blender until very fine. Do NOT use powdered sugar)Vanilla Extract & Salt - Vanilla extract and salt are not part of the core ingredients needed to make shortbread. If you're a purist then by all means leave them out. But I love the additional flavour and balance these two ingredients bring. Vanilla bean paste or the scraped beans from ½ a vanilla bean is a good substitute for vanilla extract. And use fine salt rather than flaked salt for an even distribution of salt throughout the dough. Hi Sammy- sorry to hear that- not sure why that is as I or others haven't had that problem. If you press the print button, the recipe card will open on a new tab ready to print - even though you aren't printing, you'll be able to see the ingredients and method with no ads. Hope this helps, one large circle, which is divided into segments as soon as it is taken out of the oven ( petticoat tails, which may have been named from the French petits cotés, a pointed biscuit eaten with wine, or petites gastelles, the old French term for little cakes. This term may also reference the shape of a petticoat [3]);