Coconut-Lime Shortbread Cookies Recipe | Gimme Some Oven (2024)

FAQs

Why do you put cornstarch in shortbread cookies? ›

Cornstarch provides the shortbread with structure, but its biggest job is keeping the cookies extra soft, tender, and light. I love adding a small amount to chocolate chip cookies too. Optional Coarse Sugar Topping: For an optional sparkly crunch on your shortbread wedges, add a sprinkle of coarse sugar before baking.

Check doneness by looking for an even, light brown colour across the top of the biscuits, with slight darkening at the edges. Begin checking at the tail end of the cooking time. Undercooked shortbread will be doughy and chewy. Slightly overcooked and it will become chalky, brittle and hard.

The main difference between these two cookies is the ingredients and the ratios of the ingredients. Sugar cookies typically contain eggs, while shortbread cookies do not. Shortbread also has a higher ratio of butter to flour and are usually more crumbly and tender as a result.

Also the recipe bakes the shortbread at 160c/375F which is lower than for normal cookies and helps to cook the cookies thoroughly. It also uses icing sugar (confectioner's sugar) and cornflour (cornstarch) to help give melt-in-the-mouth shortbread.

The most common mistakes when making shortbread are over-working the dough, and incorporating too much flour. The less you work the dough, the more crumbly and melt-in-your-mouth your shortbread cookies will be.

You need to chill your dough before baking. As in once you place the dough on the baking sheet, you need to chill the dough in your fridge for Atleast an hour before baking. It will make a huge difference ESPECIALLY because your cookies are clearly heavy on the butter. They will come out flat, delicate and crispy.

Bake the shortbread until it's a light golden brown across the top surface and a deeper golden brown around the edges, about 35 minutes. Remove the shortbread from the oven and turn it out of the pans and onto a clean work surface.

Why do you put fork holes in shortbread? Creating little holes in the top of the shortbread helps any moisture escape from the dough so it cooks more evenly, this also helps create the very 'short' texture of the biscuits. In baking terms, 'short' means crumbly with a melt-in-the-mouth texture.

Butter – You'll need salted butter that's at room temperature. It can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour to bring the butter to room temperature, so make sure you give yourself enough time. If you don't have salted butter, unsalted butter will also work, simply add about ¼ teaspoon of salt to the cookie dough.

What is the difference between a spritz cookie and a shortbread cookie? ›

Spritz cookies are tender and have an enriched dough.

You can take most spritz cookie and shortbread recipes and side by side the only difference in ingredients is a single egg. An egg doesn't seem like anything extraordinary, but in a recipe with only four other ingredients, that single egg changes a lot.

Shortbread is similar to shortcake but doesn't include baking powder. Lots of rich butter gives shortbread a high fat content, resulting in a fine, crumbly texture. Shortcake and shortbread biscuits are delicious on their own, with fruit and cream, or simply topped with a delicate dusting of sugar.

The key with shortbread is not to overhandle it. Make the dough exactly as instructed, but don't mess around making shapes or over rolling the dough - you will end up with delicious but tough biscuits. Stretching and pulling the dough activates the gluten in the flour, making chewy cookies and not crisp ones.

As Leiths also recommend chilling the dough before baking, although only for 15 minutes, I make another batch of their recipe with soft butter, stick it straight in the oven without passing the fridge, and end up with thinner, crunchier biscuits – presumably because the mixture spreads as the fat melts.

Problem eight: Once cooled, if I know my biscuits are underbaked can I put them back in the oven? Jo's solution: You can. Also, if you don't eat shortbread within a few days and they go soft, you can refresh them in the oven, too.

If you don't have cornstarch on hand, there are a few alternative steps you can take to produce the cookie of your dreams. Go heavy on brown sugar. It has more moisture than its granulated counterpart, which means the cookie comes out less crispy. Unsurprisingly, more liquid retention guarantees a softer bite.

Cornstarch in cookies acts as a tenderizing agent. It interferes with protein structures in the dough (mainly gluten from all-purpose flour), which helps produce a more tender and delicate texture in your baked cookies. It also helps in creating a smoother appearance.

Cornstarch substitutes for baked goods:

Rice flour is particularly great in a shortbread and other cookies as it makes for a super delicate dough.

Try using a different type of flour, or sifting your flour before you add it to the wet ingredients. If your cookie dough is too dry and crumbly, it might not have enough fat. This is a common problem with recipes that use all-purpose flour. To fix this, you can add more fat to the dough.