Coconut-Lime Shortbread Cookies Recipe | Gimme Some Oven (2024)

FAQs

Why do you put cornstarch in shortbread cookies? ›

Cornstarch provides the shortbread with structure, but its biggest job is keeping the cookies extra soft, tender, and light. I love adding a small amount to chocolate chip cookies too. Optional Coarse Sugar Topping: For an optional sparkly crunch on your shortbread wedges, add a sprinkle of coarse sugar before baking.

Shortbread contains no leavening, such as baking powder, baking soda, or eggs. Sugar and butter cookies, on the other hand, generally include one or more of these ingredients. The lack of a leavening agent in shortbread contributes to its signature crumbly texture.

You can start with this recipe for Salted caramel shortbread bars; your baking powder will give the rich and buttery shortbread just enough lift to make it flaky and delicate.

They're both delicious cookies, but different. Sugar cookies are lighter, while shortbread is dense. Shortbread is more rustic, while sugar cookies work best for cutting and decorating. Sugar cookies will have a leavening (baking powder or soda) while shortbread has a short and simple ingredient list.

The most common mistakes when making shortbread are over-working the dough, and incorporating too much flour. The less you work the dough, the more crumbly and melt-in-your-mouth your shortbread cookies will be.

"Shortbread" is just Scottish shortbread; they're one and the same. While the recipe has changed throughout its history, and there is a version of shortbread from Ireland, the original shortbread you're familiar with comes from Scotland.

If you don't have salted butter, unsalted butter will also work, simply add about ¼ teaspoon of salt to the cookie dough. The reason the salt is needed is because salt brings out the flavor in the cookies, without it, your cookies will taste bland.

Shortbread is a tight crumb, crisp, and buttery cookie, yet ladyfingers are light, airy, and meringue-based. So the two are very different cookies in several ways. However, both ladyfingers and shortbread are often used in trifles and other layered desserts.

As Leiths also recommend chilling the dough before baking, although only for 15 minutes, I make another batch of their recipe with soft butter, stick it straight in the oven without passing the fridge, and end up with thinner, crunchier biscuits – presumably because the mixture spreads as the fat melts.

How to tell if shortbread is done? ›

Check doneness by looking for an even, light brown colour across the top of the biscuits, with slight darkening at the edges. Begin checking at the tail end of the cooking time. Undercooked shortbread will be doughy and chewy. Slightly overcooked and it will become chalky, brittle and hard.

Fine Cooking explains that the butter should be at refrigerator temperature. While many cookie recipes call for softened butter or at room temperature, if your butter isn't cold when making shortbread, it's likely to turn out greasy or be difficult to roll out.

Spritz cookies are tender and have an enriched dough.

You can take most spritz cookie and shortbread recipes and side by side the only difference in ingredients is a single egg. An egg doesn't seem like anything extraordinary, but in a recipe with only four other ingredients, that single egg changes a lot.

In American English, shortbread is different from shortcake. Shortcake usually has a chemical leavening agent such as baking powder, which gives it a different, softer texture, and it was normally split and filled with fruit. The most popular example of this difference is strawberry shortcake.

If you don't have cornstarch on hand, there are a few alternative steps you can take to produce the cookie of your dreams. Go heavy on brown sugar. It has more moisture than its granulated counterpart, which means the cookie comes out less crispy. Unsurprisingly, more liquid retention guarantees a softer bite.

Cornstarch does kind of incredible things to cookies. I mean not only does it give them soft centers, prevents them from spreading, and makes them somewhat thick (in a good way), but it also contributes to the chewiness factor, which, in my opinion, is the most important cookie attribute.

Rice flour works especially well in puddings and in shortbread cookies. Like with all-purpose flour, substitute 2 tablespoons rice flour for every 1 tablespoon of cornstarch.

Check doneness by looking for an even, light brown colour across the top of the biscuits, with slight darkening at the edges. Begin checking at the tail end of the cooking time. Undercooked shortbread will be doughy and chewy. Slightly overcooked and it will become chalky, brittle and hard.