Peanut Butter Shortbread Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the trick to shortbread? ›

The most common mistakes when making shortbread are over-working the dough, and incorporating too much flour.

Peanut butter

Peanut butter cookie / Main ingredient

What happens if you put too much butter in cookies? - Quora. They spread way too far out on the cookie sheet and don't get cooked right. They're too wet, and really greasy, but can be cooked to crispiness but won't have the right texture and it will be hard to reproduce the time of baking.

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.

After shaping the cookies, don't rush to the oven! Instead, chill the dough in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or so (overnight is OK, too). A short stay in the fridge will firm up the cookies and solidify the butter. This will help keep them from spreading too much.

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.

The word "bread" comes from "biscuit bread" which was made from leftover bread dough that was sweetened and dried out in the oven to make biscuits. Why do you poke holes in shortbread? The holes allow the moisture to escape during baking and more even heat distribution. This helps dry out and crisp up the cookies.

However, lipids, which are a component to food such as shortbread cookies are considered unhealthy because they are the most energetic nutrients in food and are a source of saturated fatty acids (SFA) (usually 40%) and sometimes also trans fatty isomers (TFA) [4,5,6].

The most common mistake with peanut butter cookies is using the wrong type of peanut butter. The BEST peanut butter for today's cookies is a processed creamy peanut butter, preferably Jif or Skippy.

Why are my peanut butter cookies always hard? ›

If your peanut butter cookies are hard, you likely cooked them for too long. They should not be baked for more than 8 or 9 minutes.

Rich, tasty and nutrient-dense, nut butters like almond, cashew, peanut and tahini make excellent butter substitutes for baking and cooking. They will help retain moisture in batter and dough and give your baked goods and other dishes a nutty flavor.

There are a variety of reasons why the shortbread could be damp underneath but it is most likely that either the dough is being pressed out too thickly, the pan is not metal so heats up too slowly, or the oven temperature is too high causing the top to brown before the bottom has cooked sufficiently.

Chill Before Baking

The goal is to ensure the butter in the dough is cold when it goes into the oven. This will prevent the shortbread from spreading.

Unsalted butter for best results

Use unsalted butter for balanced flavour. Unsalted butter was traditionally used in baking because it was a superior product to salted - salt is used as a preservative so unsalted butter was thought to be fresher.

Is shortbread supposed to be soft when it comes out of the oven? Yes, upon cooling it will firm up. Shortbread should have a soft and tender texture but be slightly crisp when you bite into it.