How to make Shortbread

Dunked into hot chocolate on a chilly morning. Munched with after-dinner coffee. Served with rich, silky lemon posset for dessert. Buttery, home-made shortbread is always a good idea – and it’s satisfyingly simple to make.

Once you’ve tried our recipe for simple, round shortbread biscuits, why not mix things up with one of our variations? You’ll be glad you did.

Made using our Lakeland Brownie Traybake Tin.

Home-made Shortbread Rounds

Preparation 20 mins
Cooking 15-18 mins
Makes approx. 20-24 biscuits

Ingredients

225g butter, at room temperature
110g caster sugar
350g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
¼ tsp salt

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan 160°C/Gas 4. Line 2 or 3 baking trays with baking parchment.
Using a wooden spoon, beat the butter and caster sugar together until combined – the mixture doesn’t need to be light and fluffy. Add the flour and salt and work in with the wooden spoon, then use your hand to bring the mixture together.
Turn the dough out onto a work surface and knead for a few moments until smooth – avoid over-handling as this warms the dough. Roll out on a lightly floured surface and stamp out biscuits with a 6cm cutter. Re-roll the dough trimmings, and stamp out more biscuits until you’ve used up all your dough and have about 24 biscuits in total.
Place the biscuits on the prepared baking trays and bake for 15-18 minutes until pale golden brown. Cool on the trays for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

Chocolate-Dipped Shortbread

For a yummy treat, try dipping cooled shortbread into melted chocolate.

Set a wire cooling rack over a baking tray (this will catch any drips of chocolate). Break 200g of plain chocolate into pieces and place in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of gently simmering water, stirring often until melted. Dip in the biscuits one at a time, then transfer to the wire rack while the chocolate sets.

Demerara Shortbread

At step 3, instead of rolling out the dough, cut it in half and form each piece into an even sausage shape, about 45cm long. Instead of flouring the work surface, sprinkle it with 80g demerara sugar and roll the shortbread sausages in the sugar until evenly coated. Slice each sausage into 16 rounds, arrange on baking trays and bake for 18-20 minutes.

Find even more flavours

We’ll never say no a bit of home-made shortbread. And with so many lovely recipes on our blog, we’ll never run out of ways to enjoy it.

Enjoy a hint of citrusy flavour with our Lemon Shortbread Bites, try Christmas Stollen Squares with a buttery shortbread base (they’re fab at any time of year), or hit the home-baking jackpot with our Shortcut Millionaire’s Shortbread.

And for something savoury, give our Parmesan & Rosemary Shortbread a whirl; it goes down a treat with nibbles and drinks at parties.