Looking for easy cranberry recipes this month? This mouthwatering homemade shortbread takes only minutes to assemble and has a rich but simple flavor. Since I stock up on cranberries every fall, I am always looking for new ways to use them. I mean, cranberry sauce is delicious but I don’t want to eat it every day! However, I would happily gorge myself on shortbread cookies all year round! I added fresh orange zest to this cranberry shortbread cookie recipe and I think the two flavors blend beautifully together!
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Table of Contents
What are Shortbread Cookies?
Shortbread cookies are seriously the simplest cookie you can possibly make. Just butter, flour, a small amount of sugar and whatever flavor or add in you want to include. Today’s shortbread cookies used cranberries and orange zest. But if you want something more exotic, try my lavender shortbread cookies. If you have a bit more time for rolling and cutting, make my easy gingerbread cookies.
What is the difference between a sugar cookie and a shortbread cookie? Sugar cookies tend to me MUCH sweeter and have a ton more ingredients like eggs, vanilla, etc. The beauty of homemade shortbread is in it’s simple ingredients and buttery flavor. Basically, the ingredients are just one part white sugar, two parts butter, and three parts flour.
Why are shortbread cookies called shortbread?
Why do they call it shortbread? The term short, when applied to biscuits and pastry, means crumbly. The large percentage of butter in a shortbread cookie recipe makes the texture very crumbly. Hence, the name ‘shortbread’.
More Cranberry Recipes
Cranberry Blue Cheese Spread
Fresh Cranberry Butter Recipe with Orange and Vanilla
Cranberry Bliss Bar
Tips for Making Homemade Shortbread Cookies
Ok, shortbread cookies are incredibly simple to make, but, these tips will make them even easier. Use only REAL butter. There is no substitute! You will need it to be very soft. I recommend leaving it at room temperature overnight so that it is soft enough to blend easily in with the rest of the ingredients.
In addition, finely chop your add ins. You don’t want large chunks of stuff in your shortbread cookies. It will be much harder to slice. I used a food processor to finely chop the fresh cranberries. Don’t worry about baking the dough immediately. You can store the rolled dough in the refrigerator for several days.
How do you know when shortbread cookies are done?
This cranberry shortbread cookie recipe really does not really brown much, even when they are done cooking. You will just be able to see a slight browning around the edges. Do not overcook!
If you want a shape other than round, check out Amazon for some beautiful shortbread pans. You can get some amazing patterns in your shortbread by making them in a traditional shortbread pan.
Cranberry Shortbread Cookie Recipe
Thiseasy shortbread cookie recipe is perfect for fall entertaining. Make up the dough ahead of time and bake right before your guests arrive. And if you have extra cranberries, use them in my homemade cranberry scrub or makeCranberry Wreath DIY Place Cards!
Yield: 2 dozen
Cranberry Shortbread Cookie Recipe
Orange zest and freshcranberriesgive these homemade shortbread cookies loads of flavor. This Cranberry Shortbread Cookie recipe is seriously addictive!
Prep Time2 hours
Cook Time20 minutes
Total Time2 hours20 minutes
Ingredients
1 cup butter softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup fresh cranberries finely chopped
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon fresh orange zest
Instructions
Combine the butter and sugar. Mix on medium speed until well blended.
Add flour about 1/2 cup at a time and mix until combined.
Add cranberries and orange zest. Mix well.
Divide the dough in half. Roll each half into a log and wrap in plastic wrap.
Refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to three days
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Cut dough into 1/4 inch rounds.
Place on ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 20 minutes or until the cookies start to brown.
Remove from oven and let cool on cookie sheet.
Makes about 2 dozen
Notes
This shortbread dough will stay good in the refrigerator for several days.
Diane is a professional blogger and nationally certified pharmacy technician atGood Pill Pharmacy. She earned her BS in Microbiology at theUniversity of New Hampshire and has worked in cancer research, academics, and biotechnology. Concern over the growing incidence of human disease and the birth of her children led her to begin living a more natural life. She quickly realized that the information she was learning along the way could be beneficial to many others and started blogging and freelance writing to share this knowledge with others. Learn more about her HERE.
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.
This is much thicker than a roll-and-slice sugar cookie — or really any other popular type of cookie. If you keep your dough any thicker, you risk the dough coming out of the oven raw. If it's any thinner, the cookie will have a crispy texture with the snap of a graham cracker.
Unlike Walkers shortbread cookies where the main ingredient is butter, Scottish cookies may contain vegetable shortening or a blend of butter and vegetable shortening. Therefore, the Scottish cookies have a distinctly different texture (crisper, firmer and crunchier) and flavor.
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.
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.
Should butter be cold or room temperature for making shortbread? Always start with cold butter straight from the refrigerator. This will keep the dough from warming up, making it greasy and difficult to roll out.
Sugar provides a fast source of energy. There are rarely any artificial additives. Cons: Shortbread is a weight watcher's nightmare because it is extremely high in saturated fat and calories. Saturated fat is the 'bad' fat which is linked to artery-clogging high cholesterol and heart disease.
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.
Shortbread cookies are baked at a lower oven temperature than something like a chocolate chip cookie recipe - although it is quite a stiff dough, you do want to prevent it from spreading too much, and you want the cookies to bake before they turn golden.
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.
In British English, shortbread and shortcake were synonyms for several centuries, starting in the 1400s; both referred to the crisp, crumbly cookie-type baked good, rather than a softer cake.
The high butter quantity in shortbread (one part sugar to two parts butter) gives it that delightfully crumbly feel. And also its name. This is because the old meaning of the world “short” reflects this crumbliness and so the name 'shortbread' stuck.
If it's too warm, the butter and sugar cannot properly cream and the cookies will taste dense. Many shortbread recipes call for cold butter worked into the dry ingredients and that gives you a wonderfully flaky cookie but if not mixed properly, the results can be inconsistent.
Good shortbread is pale, buttery, crunchy, and 'short'. This means it crumbles at every bite, giving that characteristic shortbread texture. It shouldn't be soft or chewy like cookies, and it shouldn't be browned.
Many shortbread recipes start by having you cream softened butter with sugar, incorporating the dough with what former Serious Eats editor Stella Parks describes as “micro pockets of air.” Because air is a poor conductor of heat, “it helps insulate the dough from the hot baking sheet in the oven, slowing the rate at ...
Making shortbread cookies with cornstarch is necessary for a tender and delicate cookie. Next time you make chocolate chip cookies, I suggest you try adding 1 Tbsp of cornstarch to the batch to help keep them extra soft and tender.
Introduction: My name is Melvina Ondricka, I am a helpful, fancy, friendly, innocent, outstanding, courageous, thoughtful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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