Christmas Shortbread Biscuits

This recipe for shortbread is exactly how my Grandma made them. Cut into shapes (using the cutters pictured), topped with half a glacé cherry.

I have always loved this recipe, and even though it’s not strictly a festive recipe, I find Christmas is when I most often think of it and want to make it.

Along with Pavlova (you can find my Grandma’s recipe for that here), these shortbread were my favourite thing Grandma made. I recall making them with her as a child, and eating the glacé cherries before they even made it on to the biscuits!

I even remember the last time she ever made them for me. I had an afternoon tea for my 21st birthday and Grandma asked what she could bring. I initially said she didn’t need to bring anything, but I could tell she was a little disappointed at that response.

I then thought of these biscuits and called her back and asked her to make them for my birthday. I’m so glad I did, as even though that was a few years before she died, I don’t recall enjoying her shortbread again.

Now I make them, often at this time of year. I use the cutters she used, and the taste and smell of them reminds me of her. They are simple to make, yet super delicious. Even if you don’t have much time to bake over the holidays, give these a go as the few ingredients and little time needed culminate in the most comforting cheery biscuit.

If you like you can add the seeds of one vanilla bean or 1 tsp of vanilla extract or paste to the biscuit dough when you are mixing the butter and sugar together. I love using vanilla, but since my Grandma didn’t include it in her recipe I have left it out this time.

Christmas Shortbread Biscuits

Ingredients: 

160g unsalted butter, softened (at room temp)

60g caster sugar 

250g plain flour 

14 red glacé cherries, approx.

Method: 

Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius, and line two large baking trays with baking paper. 

Place the butter and sugar in the bowl of the stand mixer and beat with the paddle attachment until well combined. 

Add the flour and mix on low until a dough starts to form.

Lightly flour your work surface, and tip the dough out. Bring together with your hands then roll out with a rolling pin until it is about 2mm thick. Dust the top of the dough and the rolling pin with a little flour if the dough sticks to your rolling pin.

Cut out biscuits with a 6cm (approx.) biscuit cutter, and transfer to the prepared trays using a palette knife. Bring the scraps of dough together with your hands, roll out again and cut out more biscuits, repeat until the dough is all used up.

Cut the glacé cherries in half, and gently push half into the centre of each biscuit.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, turning the trays around halfway through to ensure even cooking. 

The shortbread shouldn’t go very golden in the oven, they will be ready when the edges start to colour and if you gently check the underneath of one you can see it has cooked and is a little golden in colour.

Allow to cool on the trays or transfer to a wire rack. 

Makes about 28 biscuits with a 6cm biscuit cutter, however it will depend on the size of the cutter you use.

Earl Grey Shortbread (Caffeine Free)

This recipe has been on my mind for a long time. Like years. I always have lists going of things I want to make, and Earl Grey Shortbread is always on there. 

I was originally inspired by some Earl Grey Shortbread from Fortnum & Mason that a friend gifted me after a holiday in the UK at least three years ago. As all Fortnum & Mason products are (in my opinion), they were stunning and a great example of traditional shortbread and really showcased the bergamot flavour so distinctive to Earl Grey. 

I did try to recreate them once, using very finely crushed earl grey tea leaves. However without a good mortar and pestle and with no additional bergamot to add to lift the flavour, they fell far short of what I was trying to recreate. 

I left the recipe alone for quite some time, deciding maybe it was for the best since I can’t have caffeine anyway. I was attempting something that I probably wouldn’t be able to eat. 

Now however, after growing my own bergamots and sourcing some online, the possibility to create a caffeine free version of this biscuit arose. Much to my excitement the addition of fresh bergamot zest to a simple shortbread recipe worked a treat, and replicated the Fortnum & Mason version in flavour quite well. 

You can of course (very) finely crush some Earl Grey tea leaves to add to the mixture (I would say 1tsp added when creaming the butter and sugar), for the tea speckled look. And fresh bergamot zest could also be substituted for 1-2 drops of a good quality (food grade) bergamot essence.

Earl Grey Shortbread (Caffeine Free)

Ingredients: 

160g unsalted butter, softened

60g caster sugar 

finely grated zest of one small/medium bergamot

250g plain flour 

Method: 

Pre-heat oven to 150 degrees Celsius, and line two large baking trays with baking paper. 

Place the butter, sugar and zest in the bowl of the stand mixer and beat with the paddle attachment until well combined. 

Add the flour, and mix on low until a dough starts to form. 

Lightly flour your work surface, and tip the dough out. Bring together with your hands then roll out to about 1-2mm thick with a rolling pin. 

Cut out fluted rounds with a 5cm cutter and place on prepared trays. Re-roll scraps of the dough until it is all used up. 

Bake in pre-heated oven for 20 minutes, turning the trays around halfway through to ensure even cooking. 

Allow to cool on the trays or transfer to a wire rack. 

Makes about 50 biscuits.

Panela Sugar Shortbread + How to Make Homemade Vanilla Extract

Now that I am well accustomed to using Panela Sugar, I am testing it out in almost every tried and tested recipe I have! And my latest discovering is that Panela Sugar Shortbread is like making a super easy version of a caramel shortbread! The bigger crystals of Panela stay whole within each biscuit, and once cooked they caramelise even more and taste like small pieces of caramel in each bite. 

And as Panela sugar is unrefined, it makes me feel a little less guilty about eating a few of these! Other unrefined sugars, such as rapadura, would probably work well too and give a similar caramel flavour to the shortbread.

I made these a little while ago as my contribution for an afternoon tea, and the leftovers were eaten at the host’s work the next day. I am told they went down really well, with one person commenting that they tasted like Irish Shortbread. Now, I had no idea the Irish had their own version of shortbread, so now I think I need to do a little research and brush up on my shortbread knowledge!

Panela Sugar Shortbread

How to Make Vanilla Extract

• If using vanilla beans for this recipe (or any other!), don’t throw out the pods after the seeds have been used. Fill a small/medium jar or bottle with vodka and add the pods to it as you use them.

• Shake the bottle now and then, and keep stored at room temperature. The more pods you add to the vodka the deeper the colour and the better the flavour you will get.

• Depending on how many pods are infusing, expect to wait at least two-three months before using the vanilla extract. You can judge it by the colour of the extract and the aroma. I think the deeper the colour the better - I’d rather wait longer to use it and have a more intense vanilla flavour. See below for progress shots of making vanilla extract from day one to four months.

• I have mentioned before that vanilla pods can also be used for vanilla sugar, and now that I am using my vanilla sugar I have been rinsing the pods off from that and adding them to the extract too - they still have lots of flavour and it would be such a shame to waste them!

• If you are looking for a good bought vanilla extract, I would of course recommend the one made by Grounded Pleasures! It has a rich colour and really wonderful intense flavour, and each tube comes with a vanilla pod inside - and you don’t have to wait a few months to use it!

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Homemade Vanilla Extract and Vanilla Sugar

Panela Sugar Shortbread

Panela Sugar Shortbread and Homegrown Camellias

Panela Sugar Shortbread

Panela Sugar Shortbread

Ingredients: 

160g unsalted butter, at room temperature

60g Grounded Pleasures Organic Panela Sugar

1 Grounded Pleasures Organic Vanilla Bean, seeds scraped 

250g plain flour

Method: 

Pre-heat oven to 150 degrees Celsius and line two large baking trays with baking paper.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, place the butter (135g), Panela sugar and the vanilla bean seeds. Beat until well combined. 

Add the flour and mix on low speed until the flour has incorporated. Mix on a low-medium speed until a dough starts to form. If the mixture remains too crumbly, add the remaining butter and mix well.

Sprinkle some flour on your work surface, bring the dough together with your hands, then turn onto the floured surface. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out, dusting with more flour as needed, so it is flat and and about 2mm thick. 

Cut the biscuits out using a small round biscuit cutter (mine is 4.5cm), using a small spatula to lift them over to the prepared tray. 

Bake biscuits for about 15 minutes, or until the edges are slightly golden. I like the check the underneath of a couple of biscuits too, if that is a little golden then the biscuits are definitely cooked. 

Cool the biscuits on the trays and store in an airtight container. 

Makes about 45 small biscuits.

Panela Sugar Shortbread

Panela Sugar Shortbread

Panela Sugar Shortbread

Homegrown Camellias

Thanks to Grounded Pleasures for sponsoring this post and providing the yummy Panela Sugar & Vanilla Beans!

Grandma's Shortbread Biscuits

This recipe is very special to me. That might sound strange as it really just comprises three ingredients, but this is probably my favourite thing that my Grandma used to make. I have great memories of making these with her and of course, eating them! The last time I remember she made them was for my twenty-first birthday. I called her and told her that I was having an afternoon tea for my birthday, and she asked whether she could provide any food for it. I immediately said no, as my Mum and I had been busy organising all the things we would need and probably didn’t need anything else. I instinctively felt bad saying no, as I knew Grandma probably wanted to bring something. My Grandma always brought food to everything, that was the way she contributed to things. A couple of days later I suddenly realised that I definitely DID want Grandma to bake something for my birthday! No birthday, and certainly not one that was an afternoon tea, would be complete without shortbread! I rang her up, and asked if she would bake some and she was happy too. I’m so glad she did as, though we all still had a few years left together at that stage, it was, I realised after she died, the last time she ever made my favourite shortbread for me.

This recipe for shortbread is quite easy but, the temperature of the butter will determine how crumbly the dough becomes. I find that butter at around room temperature is best. My Grandma never iced her shortbread, she always cut a red glacé cherry in half and placed it in the centre of the biscuit before baking. They are very nice this way, and quite festive for Christmas time. But of course, I could never only make them at Christmas! 

Shortbread the way Grandma used to make them.

Ingredients: 

160 g unsalted butter  

60 g caster sugar 

250 g plain flour

Method: 

Pre-heat oven to 150 degrees Celsius and line two large baking trays with baking paper.

Place the larger quantity of butter and the sugar into a food processor and pulse until combined. 

Add the plain flour, and pulse until the dough looks like the breadcrumbs. At this stage, if the dough does not start to come together well, add the extra butter and pulse until it is combined and the dough comes together. 

Tip the dough out onto a floured work surface. The dough may still look crumbly at this stage, but once brought together with your hands, and rolled out with a rolling pin, it will become a more consistent dough. Shortbread is a dryer dough than others so don’t worry if the edges of your dough are particularly brittle.

Once the dough is rolled out, cut out shapes with biscuit cutters. To ensure the shapes don’t break when you transfer them to a baking tray, slide a spatula under the biscuits to help lift them to the tray. 

Space biscuits evenly on the trays and bake for about 20 minutes. If your oven, like mine, doesn’t cook evenly on each tray, you might like to swap the trays over or turn them around half way through the cooking time to ensure the biscuits cook more evenly. 

Cool on trays or wire racks. 

The quantity this recipe yields is dependent on the size of biscuit cutters you use. When I used this recipe for the biscuits I made in the photo above, the recipe made twenty-two biscuits. 

Shortbread are lovely on their own, or once cooled you can ice them. When I first started icing biscuits, I used the royal icing that can be bought in a packed at the supermarket. It is quite good to use if you are just starting out and one packet will ice more than one batch of shortbread. If you want a more smooth and glossy finish of icing however, the packet mix royal icing isn’t the one to use. For such a finish it is best to make your own royal icing. I have been using the recipe from ‘Sweet Bake Shop’* and have found it to be fantastic.

*Sweet Bake Shop website has now changed (last checked 10/10/14). Website previously contained recipes and instructions. The website now represents the evolution of Sweet Bake Shop, which is now an actual store front in Vancouver, Canada. The website no longer contains recipes, however there are some video tutorials by Sweet Bake Shop owner Tessa. 

Originally Posted January 8, 2014.