A weekend evening ... I immediately remember the family tea party, and on the table in a vase there are homemade shortbread cookies. Crispy and crumbly, creamy and tender - its taste will touch the soul of anyone. The biggest fans of homemade cookies are, of course, kids. Shortbread recipes are distinguished by a large number of cooking options, filling, configuration. Unlike other types of dough, you can cut out figures of all kinds of shapes from shortcrust pastry - stars, flowers, animals and others. The delight of the kids is guaranteed to you. Consider the most common recipes for baking shortbread cookies at home.

Recipes for homemade shortbread cookies are very diverse, but there are general principles, observing which the preparation of baked goods will be very quick, not laborious, and the result will be impeccable. In order for sand products to turn out to be fragile, delicate, crumbly, you need to follow a few simple rules when choosing products:

1. Sift the flour. This will help enrich it with oxygen, get rid of impurities. For this type of dough, it is better to use flour with low or medium gluten. Sometimes starch is added to it instead of part of the flour.
2. Use butter as the fat base. In the recipe, sometimes butter is replaced with margarine, but if you take into account its harm to the body, it is better to still use butter.
3. The eggs are the glue, and if you beat in eggs with a bright yolk, the dough will turn out to be golden brown.
4. Baking is prepared with sugar, sometimes powdered sugar is used instead. In this case, the consistency of the dough changes, the cookies will be softer.
5. Sometimes mayonnaise or sour cream is added to the dough as fat. Mayonnaise needs fatty, 67% fat and more. In this case, it is not necessary to put salt in the dough.
6. Nuts are not required in the dough, but they give the dough a special flavor and piquancy. Cookies come out very refined with the addition of almonds, pre-chopped in a blender.
7. To improve the aroma of baking, vanilla is used, and if you wish, you can add jam, cottage cheese, dried fruits, zest, coconut flakes, drops of chocolate.

We reviewed the rules for preparing food for the test. There are also technological conditions that must be observed, regardless of which recipe you will use to prepare the dough:

1. Try to follow the recipe as closely as possible. If possible, it is better to weigh all products, or use measuring cups.
2. All products must be stored in the refrigerator, removed immediately before kneading the dough. It is better to cool the kitchen utensils intended for kneading. The kitchen should be cool.
3. Dry dough components (flour, sugar, salt, nuts) are mixed before starting work.
4. You need to knead very vigorously so that the dough does not have time to heat up.
5. After that, the dough is wrapped in plastic and placed in the cold, at least half an hour, preferably an hour. Divide a large lump of dough into pieces for faster cooling.

Traditional

This recipe does not contain any unnecessary ingredients and can be served warm. Let's take the right products.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups wheat flour;
• 100-150 grams of sugar or powdered sugar;
• 300 grams of butter, can be replaced with margarine;
• 2-3 eggs, their size must be taken into account;
• a bag of baking powder or half a teaspoon of baking soda, slaked with vinegar or citric acid.

Let's start baking. Cooking method:

1. We mix dry ingredients, flour. Add granulated sugar and soda.
2. Add butter to the mixed mass, after crushing it, and drive in the eggs.
3. While the oven is warming up, we cut our dough. We form small cakes from it, place them on our baking sheet, covered with parchment.
4. We stand in the oven until our pastries are browned.

Honey

And you can also try to cook a shortbread product, tasty and aromatic, with a light honey note. The set of products for shortbread honey cookies is quite traditional, you have all of them at home.

Ingredients:

• 1.5-2 tablespoons of liquid honey;
• 2-3 glasses of flour;
• 100-150 grams of butter or margarine;
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• salt;
• 2-3 tablespoons of powdered sugar.

Cooking method:

1. Grind butter or margarine. You can chop it with a knife, you can grate it. Do not forget to freeze the oil beforehand, you will not have any problems with grinding it.
2. Put eggs and honey in the grated butter, add salt. We add powdered sugar to our mixture. You can use both baking powder and baking soda. Everything is thorough and
3. mix very quickly. If you knead the shortcrust pastry for too long, it will become tough.
4. We make several lumps from the dough so that they cool faster in the refrigerator. Place in the cold for 40-60 minutes.
5. We roll out our chilled blanks. At our discretion, we give our liver any shape. You can simply cut it into rhombuses, cut out mugs with a glass, use special curly shapes - stars, animals, flowers.
6. We send our cookies on a greased baking sheet in the oven, let stand for about 15-20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius.
7. After cooling, the cookies can be sprinkled with a mixture of powdered sugar with cocoa, coconut.

Lean with cinnamon

For Orthodox Christians who adhere to the tradition of Great Lent, there is a very successful recipe for lean cookies. You can make cinnamon and ginger shortbread cookies. To prepare it, take the following set of products.

Ingredients for cinnamon shortbread cookies:

• 2-2.5 cups whole grain wheat flour
• 120 grams of refined vegetable oil;
• 100-120 grams of sugar;
• 1-2 bananas;
• a handful of orange peel;
• 0.5 tablespoons of baking soda with vinegar;
• 15 grams of ground cinnamon;
• 20 grams of chopped ginger;
• some salt.

Cooking method

1. The banana should be peeled and mashed with a fork.
2. Granulated sugar must be added to vegetable oil, thoroughly mixed with a whisk or mixer.
3. Carefully sift the flour and add to the butter, add banana puree, zest, salt and spices. Knead not too steep dough.
4. Bring the heat in the oven to 200 degrees. Place parchment on a baking sheet or brush with oil.
5. Form small balls from the dough, slightly flatten, give them the desired shape.
6. Soak the items in the oven for 10 minutes.

Sandy curd

Shortbread pastries taste delicious, but their calorie content is quite high. To a lesser extent, this disadvantage is possessed by cottage cheese shortbread cookies, and there is no need to talk about the benefits of cottage cheese. By the way, shortbread dough with cottage cheese can be used for pastries and cakes. It is convenient to combine it with all kinds of fruit fillings and cream.

Ingredients for shortbread and curd biscuits:

• 500 grams of flour, one fourth can be substituted with starch for a more crumbly dough;
• 200 grams of butter, you can use margarine or spread;
• 2-3 eggs;
• 100-150 grams of regular cottage cheese;
• 1 cup granulated sugar;
• 0.5 teaspoon salt;
• 0.5 teaspoon of baking soda;
• vanillin package.

Let's start creating our fragrant delicacy. Cooking method:

1. Flour must be mixed with baking powder, grind with butter until crumbs are obtained. The easiest way to do this is simply by hand. Do not pour all the flour at once, there is a risk of getting a very tough dough. After all, the quality of the flour, the size of the eggs, the moisture content of the curd are always different. Make sure your dough remains pliable.
2. Mix eggs, sugar and salt into a single mass. Check if the sugar grains have dissolved.
3. Add cottage cheese to the egg mass, grind with a mixer until smooth.
4. Combine all the products, mix quickly, mold into a ball. If your dough comes out slightly damp, add a few tablespoons of flour.
5. Roll into a sheet 5 - 7 mm thick, cut into rhombuses, squeeze the circles out with a glass, use curly notches - turn on your imagination and design cookies to your taste.
6. It is necessary to bake cookies at a temperature of 200-200 degrees, but the time depends on the thickness of the rolling. The average baking time is 15-20 minutes, sometimes 10 minutes is enough.

With curd filling

Let's consider how else you can make shortbread cookies with cottage cheese, in this case, the cottage cheese will be the filling for our dessert.

Ingredients for shortbread dough with curd filling:

• wheat flour -350-400 grams;
• sugar-100 grams;
• egg -1 piece;
• butter (or margarine) -200 grams;
• baking powder for dough - 1 level teaspoon.

Ingredients for the filling:

• cottage cheese (preferably homemade) -300 grams;
• granulated sugar or powder, 100 grams;
• egg-1 piece.

Cooking method:

1. Stir flour, sugar, baking powder, chopped butter. We quickly chop everything with a knife into small crumbs. We roll this crumb into a ball.
2. We separate from this ball about a third.
3. Put a larger piece of dough in a greased form, flatten it, press it lightly.
4. For the filling, combine cottage cheese, eggs and sugar, beat with a blender into a smooth homogeneous mass.
5. We transfer our filling to the dough.
6. Pour the remaining crumbs on top, you should not crush the dough.
7. We stand for 40 minutes in the oven at 200 degrees.
8. We cool our pastries, cut into diamonds and triangles, serve.

Shortbread cookies with cottage cheese are exactly what will bring the whole family together for evening tea.