Calling for just four ingredients — butter, sugar, flour and salt — shortbread is one of the simplest confections you can bake. And it’s precisely this minimalism that makes it so singular.
There’s no egg, no liquid, no chocolate, no spice. There’s not even leavening to mitigate its rigorous plainness. Yet good shortbread always manages to charm, secure in the quiet confidence of really excellent butter.
Recipes for shortbread have been around since the Middle Ages. According to the lexicographer John Ayto, the term “shortbread” is linked to shortcake, short crust pastry and shortening. In baking, “short” means a dough so richly saturated with fat that the gluten strands never get a chance to link up and toughen. The crumb stays tender and a bit sandy, which gives it a texture distinct from other cookies and cakes.
Although shortbread’s ingredients are few, its forms are many. There are slender fingers, petite coins, wedge-shaped petticoat tails said to have been a favorite of Mary Queen of Scots. But it’s these hearty highlanders that I keep coming back to. Thick rounds rolled in Demerara sugar so that their edges glitter and crunch, they were popularized by Walker’s Shortbread in Aberlour, Scotland, which has been making them since 1898. This recipe is a riff on theirs.
Its ratio hews closely to that of classic shortbread and is easy to keep in your head: one part sugar, two parts butter, three parts flour (plus a pinch of salt). Butter is the most important part, the veritable soul of good shortbread. Use the best high-fat butter you can find, preferably the cultured kind with a faint fresh tang that recalls places with green pastures and a lot of sheep.
A roll in Demerara sugar helps the edges bake up crisp and caramelized.Credit…Andrew Bui for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.
And don’t skimp on the Demerara sugar at the edges. Rolling the shaped log of dough through a copious mound before slicing ensures that every cookie gets an even coating of crystals that caramelize in the oven.
Finally, be sure to bake these in a low oven for a long time. Pull the pan when the shortbread is pale gold at the edges, but not brown all over. It’s the difference between a texture that melts on the tongue versus shattering like a cracker.
Then try your best to let the rounds cool completely before eating one. You might fail at this, and that’s fine. Warm shortbread, it turns out, is also very good — especially with a small neat whisky served alongside.
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