This is the best ever shortbread, crisp and crunchy but very tender too.
I recently saw a very good recipe for shortbread, made using some semolina. I found the recipe on DeliaOnline.com where Delia mentioned that she was originally given the recipe by John Tovey.
There are so many different recipes for shortbread, and I have some on my blog already, but this one was very appealing to me, as the semolina promised to give a lovely texture to the baked biscuit. Although the recipe uses a fine ground semolina if you don’t have that you could use ground rice instead.
With very few ingredients and not much work to do to make the dough this shortbread can be in the oven within 15 minutes or so. Therefore it is important to start by preheating the oven.
The shortbread is baked in an 8 inch round cake tin, and I used one with a removable base, then when baked and cooled for 10 minutes it is cut into wedges ready for serving when fully cooled.
Mine turned out very well indeed. I loved the texture and that rich, buttery, shortbread flavour. This is going to be my ‘go to’ recipe for shortbread in the future.
For something more extravagant there is Millionaire’s Shortbread.
Ingredients:
- 175g(1 cup + 2 tbps) plain flour, based on scooping packed flour into a 250ml cup
- 75g(6 tbsp) golden caster sugar(or ordinary caster sugar, or granulated sugar)
- 75g(1/2 cup – 1 tbsp)fine semolina(or ground rice)
- 175g(12 1/2 tbsp) butter (mine was out of the fridge for one hour before use).
- 1 tbsp ice cold water(if needed to pull the dough together.
- Preheat the oven to 150C/300F.
- Line an 8 inch sandwich/cake tin with parchment paper(loose bottomed is best for ease of serving)
- Mix the flour, semolina and sugar together, in a large bowl.
- Add the butter and toss to coat it.
- Rub the butter into the dry ingredients until you achieve a breadcrumb-like texture( I did this in the processor bowl of my immersion blender until it started to clump then turned it out into a large bowl).
- Squeeze the mixture together repeatedly until it all comes together into a nice soft dough. If necessary add a little drop of water to help the process.
- Form the dough into a single large piece and place into the cake tin.
- Use your fist to press the dough all over the base of the cake tin, until it is covered.
- User the back of a spoon to level the dough to a fairly even thickness, and to smooth the top.
- Prick all over the dough with a fork.
- Use the tines of the fork to press down around the edge of the dough to make a pattern of lines for the edge of the shortbread.
- Bake in the oven for between 60 and 75 minutes, until the shortbread has taken on a nice golden colour.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes.
- Cut the shortbread, still in the cake tin, into 4 quarters.
- Cut each quarter into 3 equal sized wedges.
- All to cool completely before removing from the cake tin and serving, or storing in an airtight container.
Thanks for this perfect recipe. I made this twice with excellent results. I have two questions:
1. In my third batch I substituted sugar with a sugar substitute made of Erythritol and Monk Fruit extract. The result was somewhat soggy, not quite as crisp as made with sugar. Would be grateful for any advice for using sugar substitute.
2. Can we scale this recipe by increasing the ingredients quantity proportionally?
Many thanks.
HI Akhtar Lodhi. I have never baked with a sugar substitute so I don’t really know why your shortbread was soggy. You should check on the packet to see if the manufacturers give any advice. But it may just be as simple as baking for longer. You should be able to scale the recipe to use a larger pan, but you may need to bake for a little longer to ensure the centre is cooked through. If that is so then you may wish to make a circle of parchment or foil to cover the edge for part of the baking time to prevent it browning too much.