Shortbread Lab433 recipes

Shortbread Lab · Calculator

Design your own shortbread

The sliders start at the typical pan: the median of 433 recipes for each ingredient, in grams per 100 g of flour. Move any of them within the range that 90% of recipes use (the 5th to the 95th percentile) and the grams update, with where your choice sits among the recipes and what that ingredient does.

This scales ratios; it is not a tested recipe. Each ingredient moves on its own against the flour, and a combination no recipe uses may not bake the way you expect. For the method, pan and oven, follow the real recipes nearest your numbers.

Flour

250 g, about 2 cups, makes one typical pan.

Start from a recipe

Grams per 100 g of flour

  1. 200 g · 81%about 1 cup

    In the middle: 50% of recipes use more, 49% less.

    Butter is the point. The Scottish ratio is two parts butter to three of flour; more makes a shorter, more melting biscuit.

  2. 100 g · 40%about 1/2 cup

    In the middle: 44% of recipes use more, 49% less.

    Sugar at about half the butter. Powdered sugar gives a finer, sandier crumb than granulated.

  3. none · 0%

    None, like 83% of recipes.

    Cornstarch or rice flour in place of some flour means less gluten and a more tender snap.

  4. 1 g · 0.4%

    In the middle: 47% of recipes use more, 48% less.

    Salt, often none when the butter is salted.

Your shortbread

Your shortbread in grams, with approximate volumes
IngredientGrams
Flour250 gabout 2 cups
Butterbutter, oil and shortening200 gabout 1 cup
Sugarwhite sugar, brown sugar, honey and syrups100 gabout 1/2 cup
Starchcornstarch and arrowrootnone
Salt1 g
Total551 g

551 g in all from 250 g of flour, counting only the groups above.

Closest real recipe: Rose Shortbread Cookies (baking-sense.com).

BakeThe median of 389 recipes is 350°F (175°C), most for 13 to 23 minutes at their own size. A bigger or smaller batch, or a different pan, changes the time.

The 3 real recipes nearest your numbers

Measured on butter, sugar, starch and salt at once. These are published, tested recipes: follow one for its method, pan and timing, or load its percentages and adjust from there.

  1. 1

    Rose Shortbread Cookies · baking-sense.com

    butter 80% · sugar 40% · starch 0% · salt 0.5%

  2. 2

    Peppermint Bark Shortbread Cookies · baking-sense.com

    butter 80% · sugar 40% · starch 0% · salt 0.3%

  3. 3

    Shortbread cookies met fudge van ZTRDG - Culy · culy.nl

    butter 77% · sugar 39% · starch 0% · salt 0.3%

How the calculator works

Every recipe is reduced to baker's percentages: grams of each ingredient group per 100 g of flour. The starting point is the median of all 433 recipes for each group separately, so no single recipe is exactly the starting pan. Grams are your flour weight times each percentage, rounded to the nearest 5 g above 50 g and the nearest gram or half gram below.

“More than 80% of recipes” counts the recipes with strictly less of that ingredient per gram of flour. The nearest recipes are measured on every ingredient at once, each scaled by how much recipes vary on it, so a wide-ranging ingredient does not outweigh a narrow one.

Only the groups listed are counted. Vanilla, spices, mix-ins and toppings are left out unless they have their own slider. Volumes are approximate: flour at 125 g a cup, sugar 200 g, butter or oil 225 g.