Chai Shortbread Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What makes shortbread different? ›

Dated back to the 12th century, a shortbread is a traditional Scottish cookie. Shortbread is a denser, crumblier cookie than sugar cookies and are often described as 'short' due to their high ratio of butter to flour which results in a rich, melt-in-the-mouth consistency.

Due to differing ratios, shortbread cookies are crumblier and more "sandy" than butter cookies, which are firm and solid enough to be iced. This mostly has to do with flour and eggs. Shortbread doesn't use eggs, while butter cookies do, making butter cookie dough more pliable and robust than its shortbread counterpart.

Taylor Swift's chai cookies are simply sugar cookies, adapted from Joy the Baker's recipe, with chai tea leaves added to the dough. Each cookie is topped with a cinnamon nutmeg icing.

Traditional Scottish shortbread is a simple recipe made with sugar, butter, flour, and salt. Other shortbread styles will include leavening agents like baking powder and baking soda, which makes them crisp instead of crumbly like traditional Scottish shortbread.

Shortbread is now Trefoils®!

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.

To make a copycat version of Chessmen cookies at home, the recipe is a simple butter cookie cut out in a special shape. A butter cookie is slightly different from shortbread but with a higher ratio of sugar to butter. This allows a butter cookie to hold its shape rather than having a tendency to crumble.

Shortbread is a tight crumb, crisp, and buttery cookie, yet ladyfingers are light, airy, and meringue-based. So the two are very different cookies in several ways. However, both ladyfingers and shortbread are often used in trifles and other layered desserts.

What is Taylor Swift's favourite Starbucks order? Taylor's go-to Starbucks drink is a Grande Caramel Nonfat Latte, but she's also expressed her love for Pumpkin Spice Lattes in the fall.

What's Taylor Swift's favorite cookie? ›

Taylor originally baked her chai sugar cookies for her 1989 secret sessions back in 2014, eventually sharing the recipe on her Tumblr when fans asked for it. With the recent re-release of 1989 (Taylor's Version), it feels like the perfect time to bring this cookie recipe back out from the vault.

The nickname 霉霉 (Méimei) was given to Swift by her Chinese fans who observed her challenges in securing the number one spot on the Billboard charts at the beginning of her singing career.

Avoid making your shortbread too thick

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.

The word "bread" comes from "biscuit bread" which was made from leftover bread dough that was sweetened and dried out in the oven to make biscuits. Why do you poke holes in shortbread? The holes allow the moisture to escape during baking and more even heat distribution. This helps dry out and crisp up the cookies.

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.

Shortbreads and cookies share a common origin as convenient energy sources but differ in preparation, texture, taste, and history. Shortbreads are crumbly due to fats before liquids inhibiting gluten development, while cookies are leavened for a light and airy texture.

Shortbread contains no leavening, such as baking powder, baking soda, or eggs. Sugar and butter cookies, on the other hand, generally include one or more of these ingredients. The lack of a leavening agent in shortbread contributes to its signature crumbly texture.

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.

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.