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3 Ingredients Shortbread Cookies Recipe

November 17, 2020 by Priya Leave a Comment

A classic shortbread cookies recipe for deliciously buttery, melt in your mouth cookies made with just 3 ingredients!
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A plate of rectangle shaped shortbread cookies

If you need a good, classic shortbread cookies recipe, here’s one for you!

This recipe makes absolutely buttery, crumbly, melt in your mouth cookies, just like how classic shortbread cookies are meant to be.

A stack of 6 rectangle shaped cookies

Classic Shortbread Cookies Recipe

Shortbread cookies are well known for their light, crispy and crumbly texture. And with every bite, you can feel them literally melt in your mouth!

This a basic shortbread cookies recipe made using only 3 ingredients, i.e. sugar, butter and flour. And the proportion of these ingredients is in the ratio of 1:2:3. This means, for every 100g of sugar, you use 200g of butter and 300g of flour. Easy right? One thing to remember though is that this ratio is for metric measurement (in grams). It is not the same for imperial measurement (in cups and spoons).

There is no egg in the recipe, which means it is a great option for vegetarians too!

And this recipe is so versatile, you can adjust it to make many different types of shortbread cookies. I have chosen to roll and cut this classic shortbread into rectangle bars with a knife, but you can also roll and cut these with cookies cutters in any shape you like. You can even decorate them into pretty festive treats!


How to Make Shortbread Cookies

Ingredients

  • Plain flour
  • Butter (salted)
  • Granulated sugar

Method

Mixing the shortbread dough

A poster of 6 images showing how to mix shortbread cookie dough

Shortbread Cookies Recipe – Mixing the Dough

  1. Measure flour into a bowl. Add softened butter into the flour.
  2. Mix both until they become crumbly. You can mix them with a cake mixer or rub the butter into the flour with your finger tips until the butter is all mixed into the flour and the mixture is crumbly.
  3. Add in the sugar.
  4. Mix until well combined. You can do with with the mixer or a large spoon. Make sure it’s well distributed with the butter and flour. At this stage, the dough should still be crumbly.
  5. If you press the dough with your hands, it should come together.
  6. Turn it out onto a clean workspace and press it together to form a dough. Do not knead the dough, suffice if you press it together into a ball.

Rolling and cutting the shortbread cookies

A poster of 4 images showing how to roll and cut cookie dough into rectangle bars

Shortbread Cookies Recipe – Rolling and Cutting the Cookies

  1. Divide the dough into smaller sections (for easy rolling and cutting). Place the shortbread cookie dough in between 2 sheets of parchment paper. And roll it to desired thickness. For consistency across all my cookies, I place 2 dowel rods on either side of my cookie dough, making sure they are positioned within the width of my rolling pin.
  2. And I literally roll on the dowel rods. That way, my shortbread cookie dough does not get any flatter than the diameter of the dowel rods, which is the thickness I want for my cookies.
  3. And since I was cutting the cookies into rectangle bars with just my icing scraper, just so that they are all of the same size, I rolled my dough on a cake decorating mat that has grid patterns on it.
  4. I used those lines to guide me in cutting my classic shortbread cookies into consistently sized bars measuring 1 inch by 3 inches. But if you don’t have the mat, you can simply use a ruler to guide you.

Shaping the cookies

A poster of 4 images showing how to lift cut cookie dough with a spatula into a lined baking tray, how to make simple hole pattern on the cookies and a tray of fully arranged cookies on a tray.

Shortbread Cookies Recipe – Shaping the Cookies

  1. To transfer the cut cookies onto my baking trays, use a spatula to lift them. That way, the cookies will not lose shape.
  2. The cookies don’t rise when baking, so it is ok to put them close to one another (so long as they are not touching one another).
  3. And for the final touch, use a fork to imprint tiny holes on each of the shortbread cookies. This step is optional, you can leave them plain if you like.
  4. Bake the shortbread cookies for about 10 minutes until the sides start turning golden brown. Remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool completely on a wire rack before storing them in an airtight container.

Shortbread cookies recipe - A row of rectangle shaped shortbread cookies against a marble background

This shortbread cookies recipe yields approximately 39 classic shortbread cookies.


Classic Shortbread Cookies Recipe Notes

Butter

  • The butter I used in this shortbread cookies recipe is salted. You can use unsalted butter too, but remember to add about ¼ tsp fine salt when rubbing in the flour and the butter.
  • Butter should be soft but not melted. Ideally, when you press your finger into the butter, it must still be firm, but soft enough to be poked.

Use granulated or powdered sugar

  • This shortbread cookies recipe calls for the use of granulated sugar. Powdered sugar is a good option too, but not coarse sugar. Coarse sugar is too coarse and you will see little specks of sugar in your baked shortbread cookies.
  • Also, if you are intending to use icing sugar, remember to measure it with a weighing scale. Cup measurement for granulated and icing sugar is not the same, meaning, 1 cup of granulated sugar does not equal the same weight as 1 cup of icing sugar. For the shortbread cookies recipe below, you would need to use 100g of granulated or icing sugar.

How to avoid the cookie dough from sticking when rolling out

  • The cookie dough, once formed, is soft, but not sticky to the touch. However, it does tend to stick a little to the rolling pin as you roll it. For smooth rolling, I place it between 2 parchment sheets. That way, it does not stick to my rolling pin and is a lot easier to work with.
  • And when lifting the cut shortbread onto baking trays, I find using a spatula really helpful in retaining the cookie sizes.

Placing the shortbread in a baking tray

  • There are no leavening agents in this shortbread cookies recipe, which means the cookies will not rise in size during baking. They do puff up a little, but it’s almost negligible. Hence, when placing these cookies in a baking tray for baking, you can place them near to one another. A mere gap of about 1cm to 2 cm is sufficient, for easy handling.

Do not over work the dough

  • To ensure your shortbread cookies turn out crispy and crumbly, take note to not overwork the dough after adding in the sugar. Suffice if you press it together to form a ball. This is because, when you work it for long, the gluten in the flour becomes stretchy, and there is a tendency for your shortbread cookies to become hard.

Baking time depends on cookie size and thickness

  • The baking time indicated in my shortbread cookies recipe below is for rectangle-shaped cookies in the size of 1 inch by 3 inches. The thickness is about ½ cm. If your cookies are larger or thicker than this, the baking time would need to be increased accordingly. And if they are smaller, then the time needs to be reduced as such.

Storing the shortbread cookies

  • This classic shortbread cookies recipe yields shortbread cookies that last well. I have tried keeping them for 3 weeks, and they were fine. Just remember to store them in an airtight container to retain their crispiness.

Classic Shortbread Cookies Recipe

Here is the full printable version of my shortbread cookies recipe.

A stack of 6 rectangle cookies and another cookie on the side, broken into 2

Classic Shortbread Cookies Recipe

A classic shortbread cookies recipe for deliciously buttery, melt in your mouth cookies made with just 3 ingredients!
0 from 0 votes
Print Pin Rate
Course: Dessert, Snack
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Shortbread Cookies Recipe
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes
Yield: 39 cookies
Author: Priya Maha

Ingredients

  • 100 g granulated sugar
  • 200 g butter salted
  • 300 g plain flour

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 170°Celsius. Line baking trays with parchment paper.
  • Place butter in a medium-sized bowl. Add flour and mix on low speed until the mixture turns crumbly. If mixing by hand, rub in the flour and butter with your fingertips until both ingredients are well incorporated and the mixture turns crumbly.
  • Add the sugar and mix until it is well incorporated into the flour and butter.
  • Turn the mixture onto your workspace and press it together to form a ball.
  • Divide the dough into sections. Roll each section and cut it into rectangle bars.
  • Place the cut shortbread cookies onto prepared baking trays.
  • Bake for 10 minutes, until the sides of the shortbread start to turn light golden.
  • Remove the cookies from the oven and let them rest on the baking tray for a few minutes before transferring them onto wire racks to cool completely.
  • Store cookies in an airtight container.

Nutrition

Calories: 75kcal | Carbohydrates: 8g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 4g | Saturated Fat: 3g | Cholesterol: 11mg | Sodium: 37mg | Potassium: 9mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 3g | Vitamin A: 128IU | Calcium: 2mg | Iron: 1mg

And that’s my classic shortbread cookies recipe.

Shortbread Cookies Recipe - A rectangle shortbread cookie broken into 2

Classic Shortbread Cookies Recipe

Here are my other shortbread cookies recipes you might want to check out:

  • Matcha Shortbread Cookies
  • Butterfly Sugared Shortbread Cookies
  • Mango Jam Filled Shortbread Cookies

And here are my other cut out cookie recipes:

  • Snowflake Sugar Cookies
  • No Spread Sugar Cookies

Happy Baking 🙂

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Next Post: Mango Jam – 3 Ingredients Homemade Recipe »

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