Be a step ahead: add a pinch of lemon to your shortbread dough!
Origin
The origins of shortbread brings us to Venice, were a very similar variety was eaten around 1000 a.C. and it was made with brown sugar imported from Egypt and Syria. Cooking books of the 18th Century show that shortbread was not used to prepare desserts but to prepare, instead, savoury dishes such as meat and vegetables pies. It was only later on that, by switching salt to sugar, cooks realized the potential of this dough to create desserts.
Cook It
Shortbread is the undisputed queen of pastry! Just by mixing and baking a few simple ingredients you can create the base for many different desserts such as cakes, cookies, pastries… and much more! The original recipe is made with flour, butter (a lot of butter), sugar and egg yolks. The lack of egg whites gives this pastry that unique crispiness it´s so famous for. Shortbread can be filled and topped with the most delicious and tasty fillings: ricotta, sweet cream, mascarpone, fruit and chocolate. This dough is typically used as a base for fruit tarts, pies, cakes, cookis and pastries.
Did You Know That?
To prepare shortbread you need to be a real artist. By changing the dosage with small shrewdnesses, you can make 4 different varieties: basic shortbread, sable or rich, for bottoms or poor and mounted. Each has its own characteristic and a different level of friability.
