Shortcake Biscuit Recipe • Food Folks and Fun (2024)

FAQs

Is shortcake biscuit the same as shortbread? ›

Shortbread is similar to shortcake but doesn't include baking powder. Lots of rich butter gives shortbread a high fat content, resulting in a fine, crumbly texture. Shortcake and shortbread biscuits are delicious on their own, with fruit and cream, or simply topped with a delicate dusting of sugar.

INGREDIENTS: Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Palm Oil, Sugar, Currants (10%), Sunflower Oil, Oatmeal, Glucose Syrup, Raising Agents (Ammonium Bicarbonate, Sodium Bicarbonate, Disodium Diphosphate), Partially Inverted Sugar Syrup, Salt, Flavouring, Colour (Curcumin).

Use Cold Butter for Biscuits

For flaky layers, use cold butter. When you cut in the butter, you have coarse crumbs of butter coated with flour. When the biscuit bakes, the butter will melt, releasing steam and creating pockets of air. This makes the biscuits airy and flaky on the inside.

Shortbread is an enriched version of biscuits that originated from the British Isles. This classic treat first made its appearance in written records in the 19th century and the term “short” in shortbread refers to its friable, easily crumbled texture.

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.

Americans are the outlier on how we use "biscuit"

To most of the rest of the English-speaking world, a biscuit is what Americans would refer to as either a cookie or a cracker. Biscuits can be sweet (shortbread) or savory. They're baked in the oven, and they're crisp, not chewy.

INGREDIENTS: Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Palm Oil, Sugar, Maize Flour, Dried Skimmed Milk, Salt, Raising Agent (Ammonium Hydrogen Carbonate), Flavouring.

History. The short part of the name shortcake indicates something crumbly or crispy, generally through the addition of a fat such as butter or lard.

White wheat in general is around 9-12% protein, while the hard reds are 11-15%. As far as brands of flour, White Lily “all-purpose” flour has been my go-to for biscuit making. It's a soft red winter wheat, and the low protein and low gluten content keep biscuits from becoming too dense.

SouthernKitchen.com says, "Ask any Southern chef or sagacious biscuit grandma and you'll hear a pattern emerge: they all swear by White Lily flour."

What does adding an egg to biscuits do? ›

As it turns out, adding hard-boiled egg yolks to your biscuit dough is a way to ward off an overworked, tough dough that can be the downfall of a butter-based pastry. When the trick is employed, the pastry shatters and then dissolves in your mouth quickly, tasting like a knob of flaky butter.

Shortbread is now Trefoils®!

They're like plain scone bread with a lightly-sweet shortbread flavor—almost like hardtack, but significantly more dessert-like and pleasant. Sonia remarked that she's had biscuits that taste too salty or too much like baking soda.

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.

Believe it or not, shortbread isn't a bread at all, but rather, a biscuit. The name can be attributed to the fact that the government once placed taxes on biscuits; so, to dodge the taxes, Scottish bakers labeled the pastry as bread.

The story of shortbread begins with the medieval “biscuit bread”. Any leftover dough from bread making was dried out in a low oven until it hardened into a type of rusk: the word “biscuit” means “twice cooked”. Gradually the yeast in the bread was replaced by butter, and biscuit bread developed into shortbread.

Irish Shortbread Is Distinct From Scottish Shortbread

Irish shortbread not only sometimes changes up the butter-to-sugar ratio (possibly going with 2/3 a cup of sugar to 1 cup of butter), but also adds cornstarch in place of some of the flour present in the traditional recipe.