Try making these easy, buttery shortbread biscuits for shortbread cookie recipe afternoon activity with the kids. This recipe also works with chocolate chips or orange zest added the shortbread dough. Beat the butter and the sugar together until smooth.

Stir in the flour to get a smooth paste. Cut into shortbread rounds or fingers and place onto a baking tray. Sprinkle with caster sugar and chill in the fridge for 20 minutes. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until pale golden-brown. Set aside to cool on a wire rack.

You can even put the dough into a round cake tin, score the top into triangle pieces, like you’re cutting a pie, and bake before snapping the shortbread into pieces. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Not to be confused with Shortcake or Shortcrust pastry.

Shortbread or shortie is a traditional Scottish biscuit usually made from one part white sugar, two parts butter, and three to four parts plain wheat flour. The triangular wedges became known as “petticoat tails” in Scots and this form of shortbread has become particularly associated with Mary, Queen of Scots. It has been suggested that a French term for the wedges of shortbread was petits gâteaux or petites gatelles – little cakes, and this became “petticoat tails”. Evidence for Mary’s baking and shortbread is sparse.

In American English, shortbread is different from shortcake. Shortcake usually has a chemical leavening agent such as baking powder, which gives it a different, softer texture, and it was normally split and filled with fruit. Other ingredients are often substituted for part of the flour to alter the texture. Rice flour or semolina makes it grittier, and cornflour makes it more tender.