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[BakerAunt]

Scottish Shortbread

A parent accompanying the Glendora High School marching band on one of its trips to Scotland was given this recipe by May Tompson of Motherwell Scotland. I have adjusted the recipe by using bleached flour (original did not specify), and increasing the "pinch" of salt to at least 1/4-1/2 tsp. I have sometimes used extra-fine sugar. It helps the cookies hold their design, but I prefer the texture with regular sugar.

The recipe makes 3 1/2 to 4 dozen individual cookies.

1/2 cup sugar
1 cup (8 oz. or two sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 tsp. salt

2 cups bleached flour

Place sugar in mixing bowl. Cut up butter into pieces, and allow to soften slightly. Sprinkle salt over the butter and sugar. Cream with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add flour to butter mixture until dough begins to come together. I use a plastic scraper to form it into a single clump.

Form pieces of dough into 1-inch balls. Place on parchment lined baking sheet. Flatten with cookie stamps dipped in fine sugar.

Bake at 250F for 50-60 minutes. The time will depend on your baking sheets. Heavy ones may require the full hour. DO NOT BAKE BROWN.

Cool on rack.

In a tightly sealed container, shortbread keeps a long time.

[BevM]

Yesterday I baked Libbies Oatmeal Coconut cookies. I added about half a cup of raisins since I had small amount left in a box (nuts would be good too). They are so good, but I will need help eating them because it made lots, maybe 6 dozen. Not sure if my girls will like them!

[BakerAunt]

Note: I posted this before I read Cass's previous comment.

I agree with S.Wirth in that I have also noticed that KAF overuses vanilla in some of their recipes. Although there is a time and a place for vanilla, it does not belong in almost every recipe. I had thought with the prices going up, there might be some backing off from their vanilla obsession.

Some of my recipes do require KAF specific ingredients. I am sorry that the cappuccino chips were discontinued, as they are key to the biscotti recipe and scone recipe KAF developed. Butterscotch chips --their suggested substitution--do not cut it. They now carry a different almond paste and a different "cinnamon chip," and I hope that those will work in my recipes.

Back to shortbread: I enjoy the taste of the butter and do not want it overshadowed. A good shortbread is an antidote to the abundance of chocolate this time of year.

My shortbread recipe comes from Scotland. I have improved it due to Kid Pizza's comments on shortbread: increasing the salt and using bleached flour (not KAF AP). I'll post it, as well as the maple sugar shortbread recipe I adapted from KAF. I'm not a fan of powdered sugar in shortbread, and I did not like using some rice flour when I tried that, as both seem to me to interfere with the taste and texture. The exception for me with powdered sugar is if I plan to use a large mold. Then I follow the recipe that came with the mold.

While KAF flour is wonderful for breads, I have moved away from using it in most cookies. I either use unbleached Gold Medal or Pillsbury, or if there is a high proportion of butter, I use bleached. Hudson Mill is my favorite bleached flour, but I do not seem to be able to find it here. My husband has been told that when we travel, we will be hitting the grocery stores in route.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by BakerAunt.

[KIDPIZZA]

Italiancook wrote:

I’ve never made shortbread, but I agree with you. I’ll be interested in knowing what the bakers of shortbread think.

Dear Italian cook, Good morning. You asked for thoughts for "SHORTBREAD COOKIES"....well here are mine.

RE~READ what our member BAKER AUNT wrote in this thread She said it all very well.
Just 4 ingredients...of course in proper ratio (That is my secret) I will say just one secret today. Use only 1, tsp of TABLE SALT per 16, oz (1, pound of butter) or
6 grams worth.
Try not to employ if at all possible SALTED BUTTER...WHY. because it has 04% salt/per 1# butter in it which amounts to approx. 10% more salt than my stated amount. you will taste that extra amount of salt in your cookies.

One or two simple items I can share with you today & it is this, Employ BLEACHED AP flour ONLY. Remove 25% & add in CORNSTARCH or white rice flour... Either will do, I use cornstarch because IT IS LESS EXPENSIVE... (I am as cheap as my baking buddy Miss SARAH WIRTH IS). No need to use powdered sugar, using this culinary choice defeats the function of the vital make~up (GUTS) of this recipe. employ X~tra fine gran sugar run it thru the FP for about 20/25 seconds. No liquids are to be used. But & however POWDERED VANILLA can be employed (KAF sells this ulta~ priced item.
I have only 2 SIGNATURE baking recipes, ie, AUTHEMTIC SCOTTISH SHORTBREAD COOKIES & NU YOLK CHEESECAKE. that means no one bakes those two items better or even as equal as my 2 recipes.

I hope I have encouraged you to bake these cookies.... truly there none better than an authentic SCOTTISH shortbread cookie with just those aforementioned 4 ingredients.
This concludes my thoughts.

ENJOY THE DAY MY FRIEND

~CASS/KIDPIZZA.

[Mike Nolan]

It should come as no great surprise that the test kitchen staff at any food company are considered part of the marketing department. Their job is to create demand for their products. Even distributors like Sysco have chefs on staff who travel around to key customers and show them new products and new ways to use existing products.

More than once I've gotten the impression that the buyers at King Arthur don't talk to the test kitchen staff. PJ once told me that she had spent several weeks working on an article only to find out that a key ingredient in it had been dropped from the warehouse (which is just down the stairs),

[Mike Nolan]

The thing that has always fascinated me about baking is how you take 4 ingredients that are either inedible or uninteresting, water, flour, yeast and salt, combine them, and the magic of bread happens!

And as you bring other ingredients such as oil, sugar and eggs, you get everything from cake to waffles.

As to cooking, I think it appeals to the engineer in me, cooking is just altering the properties of foodstuffs, so it's applied chemistry and physics. There's a precision to it, yet also an art.

I once saw a well-known (Iron) chef take a jumbo shrimp and with a few knife cuts turn it into a dragon in front of our eyes.

[skeptic7]

I have "Black Twig", Winesaps, Staymans, Northern Spy, Nittany, Cortland, Crimson Crisp, Empire ( if I didn't eat it ) in my refrigerator and possibly some others. The sellers at the Farmer's market had many varieties and the late fall is the best time for apples. There are a lot of apples at the grocery store like Pink Lady and Jaz and Encore which are still rather uncommon.
Jonathans are good apples for cooking, I am told. I hope you have good sweet rolls. They are a little too tart for me but many other people like them.
I bought two "Sheep Nose" apples this fall which were new for me. The first one tasted harsh and green, so I sliced it up and fried it with butter and brown sugar and ate it for breakfast. I waited two weeks and tried the second one and it still tasted green, so I fried it too. It was great that way. The seller later told me that "Sheep Nose" apples were an acquired taste and that the apples were probably completely ripe.
I was surprised to learn that Winesaps and Staymans are different varieties -- I thought they were color variations . They taste similiar.

[BakerAunt]

I baked a lot on Tuesday. I made Red Velvet baked doughnuts with cream cheese frosting from Stonewall Kitchen mix that was marked down at T.J. Maxx. I had meant to use it as we got into the hectic moving time, but instead, I ended up moving it here. The cake-like doughnuts are very good; the cream cheese frosting is so-so, although it works with the cake.

I also baked Maple Shortbread. It's a KAF recipe that I tried five years ago (my review is still there) that I did not quite hit what I was looking for. I tried a different one the next year, but I could not roll that dough out and ended up with round stamped cookies. I wanted to use a small imprint maple leaf cutter I have (the kind with the spring). I really do love fall, so in this week before he Christmas season begins (I know: it began in the stores before Halloween was over), I wanted to bake this cookie again. I followed the recipe that I had used the first time:

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/maple-shortbread-cookies-recipe

I deleted the vanilla and the maple extract, and I used 2 1/4 cups bleached flour instead of 2 1/2 cups of KAF all-purpose. The recipe made 58 cookies (about 2-inches wide) and one blob from leftover dough. I baked them on heavy baking sheets for 15 minutes at 350F. I'm eager to test them tomorrow.

I baked Ellen's (Moomie's) Buns as twelve rolls, making my usual substitutions. We are going hiking tomorrow, and I needed some rolls for our sandwiches.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by BakerAunt. Reason: added omitted word

[Italiancook]

I had 2 lbs. beef stew meat in the freezer, so I made Vegetable Beef Soup. I've made this for decades. The last time I pulled a quart of it out of the freezer, the taste fell flat. I thought I was tiring of the soup. Today, I added half of a large jalapeno (fine dice) to the simmering beef, herbs, and onions. I wasn't sure if I should put in the jalapeno then, or wait until I added the carrots. I also put the usual pearl barley in the soup, even though I wasn't sure jalapeno would go good with barley. The finished product tasted only slightly different, but a pleasant heat lingered on the tongue after eating, so I declared the experiment a success. The heat is not so intense that I'd refrain from giving away this soup to people who don't normally eat jalapenos.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Italiancook.

[Mike Nolan]

Spice vendors would like you to believe you need to replace all your herbs and spices once a year, if not more frequently. I don't do that, and neither do any of the professional chefs I know. (There is a noticeable difference between fresh herbs and dried ones, but once they're dried, the rate of change seems to be quite slow to me.)

I do think the type of container and where it is stored affects potency, though. In particular, the 'flip open' jars seem to dry out faster than the screw lid ones. And if you store them at the back of the stove or in a cabinet that is close to a heat source, then I'm sure they probably do dry out faster.

I do think that Penzy's may do a better job of pulling out-of-date items from their shelves than your typical grocery store does, but that assume you can find freshness dates on them at all. (Not every herb or spice has them, though most have tracking codes.)

And if you buy herbs and spices that are stored in bulk and weighted out when you buy them, who knows how long they've been there?!

[navlys]

I found a turkey breast (in the crockpot) recipe on the "recipe tin eats" blog. I've made it before and will this week. The turkey comes out super moist with a nice gravy that you can make. The skin is not crisp unless you put the breast under the broiler but we don't eat the skin anyway. I highly recommend this woman's recipes.

[Mike Nolan]

I mill my own whole wheat flours, so I'm always on the lookout for places to buy wheat berries in bulk.

I used to be able to get Wheat Montana hard red spring/winter wheat in a 25 pound bag at the local WalMart or Hy-Vee, but both have stopped carrying it.

This summer we stopped by the Wheat Montana bakery/store in Three Forks MT, and I could have bought wheat berries in 50 pound bags, but didn't have space for them in the car. So I bought some 5 pound bags of wheat berries (at a much higher price per pound, sadly.)

My Nutrimill impact mill came from Pleasant Hill Grain, which sells wheat berries and other whole grains in 45 pound buckets. (I recommend also ordering the screw on Gamma Seal lid.) Their website has a pretty wide variety of things, and is a dangerous place to browse. I ordered my Bamix stick blender from them. (Bamix invented the stick blender and makes an industrial strength but home kitchen sized one, it's not cheap but it's durable, I went through 3 or 4 cheaper stick blenders in a few years.)

WalMart's online store has 26 pound tubs of Wheat Berries for a pretty good price.

[Mike Nolan]

In 2015 I ordered a case (1000) of plastic gusseted bread bags that were 5.5 x 4.75 x 19 (.65 mil thickness) from International Plastics With shipping they were under 5 cents each.

The stock number was BR-HI1019L The only bread I've baked that didn't fit in them was the celebration Challahs I baked last fall, as those were about 20 inches long.

It'll probably take me another year to use up the rest of the case, but I think next time I'll order the slightly thicker BR-HI1019 bag, which should add less than 2 cents to the cost of each bag.

Side note: I've moved this thread over to the 'Sources' category.

[BakerAunt]

As a lot of us are finding that we need to order some of our specialty baking items and products because they are not sold locally, I am starting this thread so we can list those places. I live in a rural area now, so I do even more online ordering than previously: Here are mine:

King Arthur Flour--For me their Bakers Bucks program makes sense, but it probably doesn't for everyone. They do have various specials, so it helps to be on the email list. It's where I go for special clear flour, regular pastry flour, Vermont Cheese powder, espresso powder, durum flour, semolina, medium rye flour, and yeast. I also use a lot of their parchment.
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop-home/index.html?go=Home

Penzey's Spices--If you are on their email list, you will be notified of specials, as well as freebies with an order. Shipping is free over $30, but they run a lot of $20 shipping specials. (See S. Wirth's note about current vanilla special.)
https://www.penzeys.com/

Bob's Red Mill--Here again, it pays to get their emails, as they have sales throughout the year. Shipping is free for orders over $50, but that does not include 25 pound bags. It does include cases with multiple bags, and there is a discount for cases. In addition to flours, they carry whole grains I've not see elsewhere, coconut, dates, beans. Their unbleached cake flour performs well, as does their Artisan bread flour. I like their vegi-soup mix of dried split peas, lentils, and barley. I also like their long-grain brown rice, golden couscous, and oats of all kind.
https://www.bobsredmill.com/

Kitchen Krafts--the only place I've found online for buying ClearJel (not the instant stuff), and also some canning tools. I've not found their shipping prices to be particularly good. They do have various specials, so it pays to be on their email list. Their return policy is cumbersome.
https://www.kitchenkrafts.com/

Fancy Flours--a good place for some specialty cookie cutters, springerle molds, wafer paper, and some specialty flavorings (where I found strawberry a few years ago). The topper for our wedding cake came from here. Their emails sometimes have specials.
http://www.fancyflours.com/

[skeptic7]

I made low fat Vanilla CHeese cake from Susan Purdy's "Have your cake and eat it ". I had had a Doctor's appointment and the scales persuaded me it was time to try low fat cooking again and make it for other people's birthdays so they can be stuck with the left overs. The cake used 1 1/2 packages of low fat cream cheese and 2 cups of low fat vanilla yogurt. It also used a few tablespoons (3 ) of Cheerios for a sort of crust subsitute.
This was tasty enough but it differered from a full fat cheese cake by being much smaller. There isn't a crust, there is barely a sprinkling of cheerio dust on the bottom, and the cheese cake ended up about 1 inch high or less, as opposed to the 2 inches of a real New York Cheesecake. I baked it in a 9x13 pan.
The strawberry glaze made with frozen strawberries was red and tasty and completely fat free.
The good part is that it was tasty, and Sam, whose birthday it celebrated, liked it. The bad part was that it was tiny.