Traditional Scottish Shortbread Recipe, Featuring Homemade Butter

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PHOTO: GENTL AND HYERS/JUPITER IMAGES
A cup of tea and our Scottish shortbread recipe — using your own butter — is an afternoon dream.

This lovely, flaky dessert is associated with Scotland. The Scottish shortbread recipe we’re providing dates from the early 19th century and is still the classic formulation, with flour, butter, and sugar in the ratio of 8:4:2. The butter you make at home has more fat than butter you buy, and results in a lighter, crisper shortbread.

Short crust pastries don’t puff up during baking, and are notoriously difficult to amalgamate into dough. Often, the butter and flour just don’t want to bind. But homemade butter usually has residual water from the washing process, which commercial butter does not. With the higher fat and water content, making a shortbread dough with one’s own butter is a dream — the dough comes together effortlessly. However, if the dough frustrates you, change the proportion to 7:4:2. For a fun variation on traditional shortbread, use rose water for the final wash of your butter: Your shortbread will have a lovely perfume.

Ingredients:
8 ounces (2 scant cups) unbleached pastry flour
4 ounces (1/4 pound) butter, cool, but not refrigerated hard
2 ounces (1/4 cup) sugar

  • Published on May 6, 2009
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