THE Definitive Shortbread Recipe

Lately, my baking attempts have resulted in disaster.  My “Chewy, Chocolate Chip Cookies” looked fabulous, but sadly could have been confiscated as an offensive weapon.

To add further insult to injury, my Brownies resembled a pool of brown mess with a tooth-breaking crust on top (which someone and their spoon went to town with… shame on you, Mother!  At least it tasted nice…).  Needless to say, those blog posts made the cutting room floor.

I’m more of a savoury person anyways (in taste bud only; not personality, I hope), so I was nearly resigned to the fact that I just could not bake sweet treats.  I had almost come to terms with it; flicking past the apple crumble and pumpkin pie recipes despondently… wondering what was so wrong with the chocolate muffins in McDonald’s, anyway?  Sigh.

But after reading this blog post the other day, I was spurred on to give it another shot.  I drool at every food picture at the best of times, but the craving for home-baked shortbread was overwhelming.

Having baked “shortbread” once before, I was apprehensive.  My last batch looked like a tray of sunken, week-old scones (hence the inverted commas in my description; shortbread it certainly was not!).  They didn’t even taste similar. 

BBC Good Food… your version of shortbread left me nothing short of disenchanted.  How could you?  I’m one of your biggest fans… sniffle. 🙁  Thankfully, your abundance of other lovely recipes has mended our once broken relationship.

So; it was time to see if my next shortbread attempt would leave me crestfallen once more… 

I am happy to report; faith in my baking ability has been fully restored!  Of course it has! 🙂  I can safely say you won’t need to look elsewhere for an authentic shortbread recipe; this one is perfect.

I don’t (yet) have the adorable shortbread tin like Wendy’s; I just packed my mixture into two sandwich tins.  I was going to re-type the instructions here, but I followed every ingredient, measurement and method to the letter (a first for me), so if you want to try it, you’re best checking out the link above. 

Rave reviews all around from my samplers; I thoroughly recommend it to any bakers who have had a knock in confidence!

Enjoy 🙂

21 Comments

  1. Wendy@The Omnivorous Bear

    Oh Catherine, how lovely of you! I had a feeling you would like that recipe – it is just the right proportion of fat to flour.

    The only thing I will say is….. you HAVE to get the mold! 😉

    Then you can bake more!

  2. Lynn

    I have the molds, but I’m terribly lazy when it comes to making shortbread – plus Tesco’s is so good, I usually just pump more money into their coffers, – but, yes, I’ll have another go next week.

  3. Merisi, Vienna

    Congratulations, it seems as if you earned your success the hard way!

    Should you ever want to try another brownie recipe, I have one from Gourmet Magazine that is simply, but works every time and tastes devine. Just drop me a mail, I’ll scan it for you.

    Cheers,
    M.

  4. Ananda Rajashekar

    Catherine, lately i have not got great success with few of baking, but i think will be on track pretty soon, even i was impressed with Wendy’s shortbread, but i still have her apple butter on the priority list, your looks good too 🙂 .Oh ya i had wondering where you had been lately…but looks like i have missed few of post coz my email subscription and forgot about it 😛

    1. noblenourishment

      Oh Ananda, how nice does that Apple Butter look?! Yum! Yes, I’ve been rather busy of late; all my blog posts are building up. I need to get them written out and posted, I’ve been cooking so much lately aswell 🙂

  5. Chrissy

    I was thinking about making shortbread as an ‘edible Christmas gift’, as I love it so much and I’m going to impose my love of shortbread on others!

    1. noblenourishment

      Haha I’m sure they’ll be grateful for you imposing shortbread on them; I know I would be! I really want to make edible Xmas gifts this year, let me know how you get on Chrissy! 😀

  6. Lucy

    Good shortbread is hard to find and even harder to make – seems some people (Wendy, my MIL, you) have the knack and some people (err, me) don’t! But perhaps I should give Wendy’s magic recipe a try…

  7. Pingback: Indulgent Chocolate and Cherry Brownies « Noble Nourishment

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