Today on Sugar Spun Run, I'll be showing you how to make whipped shortbread.
Hey Sugar Spun Bakers, Sam here!
And today, I have another carefully tested, well researched, and perfected recipe to share.
This old-fashioned, whipped shortbread recipe is so easy to make. It comes together
in a matter of minutes. There are only six ingredients needed, and there is no chilling
required. I think you're going to absolutely love this one,
so let's go ahead and get started by preheating
our oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now for today's recipe, you are going to want to use either an electric
mixer or a stand mixer.
There is a lot of whipping involved in this recipe,
hence the name: whipped shortbread,
so, to save my arm, I am going to be using my stand mixer today.
I know a lot of you have been commenting that you wanted to see me
use my stand mixer a little bit more than I have been,
so, hopefully, this makes you happy. For today's recipe,
you are going to need one cup of softened butter.
Now as I mentioned, there are only a handful of ingredients in today's recipe,
so I recommend using the highest quality of each ingredient that you can find.
Today I am using a European butter.
And if you can't find European butter, you just want to use regular butter,
you certainly can, but European butter just tastes better and it has a higher fat content,
I just think it makes the cookies better, so you might as well use a better butter.
Now this is unsalted butter and it has been softened.
It's not so soft that it's melty, but it is approaching room temperature.
For today's recipe, we are going to be using powdered sugar.
You will need 3/4 cup of powdered sugar,
which if you think about it is not very much sugar for a cookie recipe,
so that might be a plus for some of you. Now,
I'm going to be fixing my mixer with the paddle attachment today.
And we are going to start mixing our ingredients together
on low speed. And we’ll gradually
increase this to high. Now
sometimes my mixer struggles a little bit to reach all of
the ingredients with the paddle attachment,
so, after mixing for a couple of seconds,
I’ll usually pause and use a spatula to scrape the sides
and bottom of the bowl because I want to make sure that the butter
and sugar are well combined before I really start whipping things together.
Now turn your mixer back to low speed, and we are going to gradually increase the speed to high.
Now once you have your mixer going at high-speed,
you are going to need it to beat this butter until it is light and creamy.
It should be lightened in color is what I mean,
and this is going to take about four to five minutes,
or sometimes even longer. Now about after 2 minutes or so,
I will usually stop because, as you can see,
we're getting this little ring of butter right around the edge of our bowl.
It's a little bit higher than our paddle attachment can reach,
so I like to use my spatula and just scrape that back down
because we want all of our butter to be nicely whipped.
That way we get a really nice consistency with our cookies.
And then we'll continue to beat this on high speed.
Now if you are using an electric mixer,
like I said, you're going to be getting a little bit more of an arm workout,
and it may take longer than 5 minutes,
so just be prepared for that. Okay,
so this has been five minutes
and as I think you can see, our butter has lighten in color, it’s super creamy,
it's super light looking. This is what you want to see.
You want a nice, whipped butter base.
Now for flavor, we are just going to be adding a teaspoon of vanilla extract
and 3/4 teaspoon of table
salt. We’ll just stir these in.
You only need to stir for a couple more seconds just to get those nicely combined.
All right, we'll slide our mixer over a little bit
for a second, and we are going to need a separate bowl for our dry ingredients.
Now all you need here is two cups of all-purpose flour,
and we are also going to be adding two tablespoons of cornstarch.
Now not all whipped shortbread recipes use cornstarch.
There is already some corn starch in your powdered sugar,
but I love to add it. I think it gives the cookies
an even airier, lighter, more melt-in-your-mouth consistency,
so that is why I use it. We’ll just stir these ingredients together,
so they're nicely combined. And then we will gradually
add our flour and cornstarch mixture to our butter mixture.
Now, we did all of this work to whip our butter on high speed for 5 minutes or so,
but at this point you can really slow things down.
I just like to add the flour in three or four parts,
just gradually. And then we'll just mix everything together on low speed just
until the flour is completely combined,
but I really don't like to overdo it at this point
because, if you do, you can end up making the dough a little bit to warm, which can make it difficult
to manage, it can make it spread a little bit too much
when it's—when the cookies are baking in the oven,
so I just like to take it easy at this point. All right,
let me do this final bit of mixing by hand,
just checking to make sure I've got all of my flour incorporated and this looks pretty good,
so we can go ahead and start rolling out our cookies. We’ll scoop our
cookie dough by tablespoon sized portions,
and just briefly a roll it between your hands to form a nice smooth ball.
And you can see I'm placing these on a parchment paper lined baking sheet.
The cookies won't spread very much, but I do like to give them a little bit of breathing room.
Now, whipped shortbread cookies characteristically have a nice fork indent in them,
similar to what you see on a peanut butter cookie, though
I guess it's not the crosshatch design, so we are going to do that as well
so you have a nice, even cookies that cook evenly
and that aren't raw in the middle. Now,
to do this, I like to take a fork and press the tines of the fork into the cookie,
but you'll find most of the time the fork is going to want to stick,
so I have a little bit of powdered sugar measured out here.
This is just like a table—probably two tablespoons.
I'll just dip the tines of the fork into the powdered sugar
and then gently press down on each cookie to lightly flatten it.
And then finally, this is optional,
but I love adding sprinkles on top of my shortbread. I’m just using colored nonpareils here.
You could use colored sugar or jimmies, that would be fine too,
or you don't have to use sprinkles at all. It's fine,
be boring. All right, we'll take this tray over to our 325 degrees
Fahrenheit oven where it's going to need to bake
for 11 to 12 minutes.
Now once these cookies are finished baking, they're still going to be pretty light
in color, that's totally normal. In fact,
if you notice that they're beginning to turn golden brown,
they're actually probably a little bit overdone,
so I don't recommend going quite that far. All right,
all we have to do now is let our cookies cool,
and then we can go ahead and dig
in. And that is how you make these super easy, whipped shortbread cookies.
I mean, these are easy any time of the year, but I love making them around Christmas.
You couldn't have an easier Christmas cookie,
just use a red and green sprinkles. I hope you guys enjoyed today's recipe.
If you try this one out, please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
I always love hearing from you. Thank you guys so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.
Melt in your mouth.