These are the most delicious, buttery shortbread cookies you’ll ever try. You see, this is a yummy and simple recipe that I took from my Grandma’s personal cookbook. She was an amazing cook and a trained chef. Every time we were at my grandparent’s house, our time as a family revolved around cooking and eating, especially at Christmas time. This Christmas shortbread recipe is certainly going to appeal to the family from the very young, to the oldest.

As I was one of the younger grandchildren, the simpler recipes were given to me, to enjoy baking cookies with my beautiful Grandmother. And trust me, these cookies are simple. You’ll probably already have the ingredients in your kitchen too.

Shortbread Cookie Recipe

Firstly, set your fan-forced oven at 180ºc. I had to play around with the temperature because my grandmother’s recipe stated that the temperature should be set at a low to medium temperature. You might have to adjust this around. Initially, I thought that 160ºc would work better, but 180ºc was best for our oven.

Ingredients

– 250g cold butter, cubed
– 2 tablespoons rice flour
– 1/3 cup icing sugar
– 2 cups plain flour

Method

After the oven temperature is set, you’ll need to sift all of the dry ingredients together into a mixing bowl. This is everything except for the butter at this stage.

Once the dry ingredients are sifted well, it’s time to rub the butter into the dry ingredients. Be sure to wash your hands first, because you’ll really need to get your hands into it. With your hands, continually rub the butter in until a crumbly mixture forms.

Forming the Dough

Pour the crumbly mixture onto a clean, dry, and well-floured surface. Follow by kneading the mixture lightly until the mixture is smooth. It should form a dough-like texture. Next, divide the mixture into four parts evenly. Re-flour the surface and start to roll out ¼ of the mixture with a floured rolling pin.

Use your choice of a cookie cutter (we used a star shape) and cut out shapes into the rolled dough. We used stars because we wanted to bake Christmas shortbread, but you could use any shape that you wanted. Repeat this step for the other quarters of dough until you’ve used up all of the shortbread dough.

I forgot to mention that prior to shaping the shortbread dough, you should line a large baking tray with baking paper.  Spray the paper with a cooking spray such as olive oil spray (we use light, unflavoured olive oil). Then place the shortbread dough onto the lined trays.

Once you’ve completed this step, place the tray of cookies into the preheated oven and bake for 13-15 minutes or until the cookie is slightly golden on the edges.

Finally, once the shortbread has cooled down on a cooling rack, you can decorate the cookies. Whether you want to ice them or pour chocolate on them, it doesn’t matter. It’s your choice. We like to dust our Christmas shortbread stars with icing sugar. Now there’s nothing left to do except enjoy these beautiful old-school shortbread biscuits!

And here goes…. the final product! If you’d like, you can put the shortbread into a Christmas cookie container, wrap them in a bow and give them to somebody as a gift. Enjoy!

Notes:

This shortbread recipe can be made with a food processor. All you have to do is process the sifted dry ingredients with the butter until the ingredients combine to form a crumbly mixture.
If you want to flavour the cookies add 1 teaspoon of your chosen flavouring (e.g. lemon zest or vanilla extract).

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