Nancy Silverton's shortbread was a complete bust due to...well, me.

M

marilynfl

Moderator
Okay...not a complete bust, but certainly not what I hoped for & planned on.

Let me clarify first: this is her newest shortbread recipe from the "this cookie changed my life" cookbook. Nancy already has a La Brea shortbread that is very similar to the one I've always used, but yesterday's attempt was with this new recipe.

Silverton is adamant about using quality, high-fat ratio butter (read: expensive, but I bought it), and then browning it, and then chilling said expensive butter and using TBLs of pure vanilla bean paste (which I did) and high oven temperatures reducing to low oven temperatures midway and flipping & rotating cookie sheets and chilling the dough, and then rolling out the dough and then freezing the dough...

...oops.

So...okay, I did ALMOST ALL THAT but chilled the prepped cookies for 2.5 hours in the refrigerator (instead of freezing for 1 hour) and then baked them. Which means it's NOT Nancy's fault that my cute, little, embossed-with-a-stamped-M dough literally melted into something that could be found on a Dali painting. By cutting away 50% of the melted edges, I rescued about a dozen very well-done pieces of shortbread. And it's good, but I won't go through this again.
 
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Fancy Nancy. What a lot of work. Makes me wonder if it can be called shortbread if it uses browned butter. Did that browned flavour come through in the bit that you rescued?

I have found shortbread to be very useful for decades, often making hors d'oeuvres with it, adding lavender or Nicoise olives; that's about as far off the path as I get. But still can't imagine browned butter. Sounds more like a cookie.
 
Okay…now I’m confused. I always thought shortbread WAS a cookie. And called “short”bread because of the high quantity of fat?

And she didn’t dwell on why she was browning it—it’s almost always done for flavor, but the process also evaporates water, so that affects the overall moisture content as well.

I couldn’t taste the difference because the survivors were thoroughly baked. And I won’t be wasting expensive ingredients to test it again.
 
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shortbread comes in various shapes. My most-Scottish ancestors used to make a round slab and score it into triangles before baking. Also made slabs as cake bases. And of course, the cookie shape. But I think the method and ingredients stayed in tact.

I think it is one of those iconic preparations that becomes something else when it is altered. Like Iles Flottantes, or Chicken Paprikash or Crepes Suzette or all those lovelies that involve specific ingredients and methods which then become a version of or something completely different when altered. So when is 'shortbread' no longer shortbread? I think when the method is changed significantly, perhaps. I dunno.

I like the flavour of browned butter. Too much. I also like shortbread and can't get enough of it. It always seemed to be a Christmas thing. Right now we can't get sugar so there is no temptation. Strikes that have gone on since well before Christmas. And yet, I am not any slimmer.
 
Oy Vey, that's a lot of expense and effort. I'm sorry it didn't change your life for the better. One and done. Thank you for reporting out.....
 
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