AI-generated illustration of pale-golden butter shortbread fingers with fork marks, a sugar finish and fine crumbs

Biscuit

Butter Shortbread

Published 28 October 2026 · Updated 28 October 2026

These butter shortbread fingers have a gentle snap, a fine crumb and a light scattering of sugar on top. Rubbing cold butter into the flours and pressing the dough straight into a tin keeps the handling light, while cutting it warm helps give neat edges.

Research and editorial desk reviewed.

Not kitchen tested by The Black Farmer.
Serves 16
Prep 118 min
Cook 45 min
Total 163 min

Timing: Allow about 2 hours 43 minutes, not all hands-on: 5 minutes lining, weighing and cubing; 8 minutes rubbing and gathering; 7 minutes pressing, marking and pricking; 30 minutes refrigerated chilling; 45 minutes baking including loading and endpoint check; 5 minutes initial in-tin cooling; 3 minutes cutting and adding the finishing sugar; then 60 minutes further in-tin cooling before lifting and serving. Preheat for 20 minutes during the final 20 minutes of the chill; that overlap adds no extra elapsed time. Active preparation is 23 minutes. The existing display's 118-minute prep figure includes the 30-minute chill and 65 minutes cooling. Cold butter needs no softening stage. All durations are untested estimates: slower preheating, a damp-looking centre or shortbread still warm after the cooling allowance extends the total.

Ingredients

  • Longman's Unsalted Roll Butter (200g)

    Butter (unsalted)

    200g, fridge-cold, cut into 1cm cubes

    All rubbed into the dough. One 200g Longman's Unsalted Roll Butter retail pack; none reserved for greasing or finishing. Contains milk.

    £3.80

Adds 1 items across 1 products — £3.80 total.

Pantry ingredients such as oil, salt and herbs are not included.

Other Ingredients You'll Need

  • Plain flour — 260g (All for the dough; no additional flour for dusting because the dough is pressed into its tin. Contains wheat.)
  • Cornflour — 40g (White corn starch sold as cornflour in the UK, not yellow cornmeal; all for the dough.)
  • Caster sugar — 90g, divided: 80g for the dough and 10g for sprinkling after baking (Weigh the two portions separately at the start; no extra unmeasured sugar.)
  • Fine salt — 2g (All for the dough; use the specified unsalted butter.)

Method

Line the tin and weigh

Allow 5 minutes. Line the base and all sides of the 20 × 20cm metal tin with two crossing strips of baking paper, leaving lifting handles above the rim. Do not grease it. Weigh the plain flour, cornflour and salt, and put the caster sugar into separate 80g and 10g portions. Keep the 10g finishing sugar aside. Cut the fridge-cold butter into 1cm cubes; it does not need softening.

Rub in the butter

Allow about 8 minutes. Mix all 260g plain flour, 40g cornflour, 2g fine salt and the 80g dough portion of caster sugar in the bowl. Add all 200g cold butter and rub it into the dry ingredients with your fingertips until there are no distinct butter cubes and the mixture looks like damp, fine crumbs. Squeeze a handful: it should hold together. Press and gather the crumbs just until they form clumps; do not knead smooth or add water, milk or egg. If still powdery, continue rubbing and squeezing gently rather than adding liquid.

Press, mark and prick

Allow 7 minutes. Tip every crumb into the lined tin and distribute it evenly into the corners. Press into a level slab, roughly 1–1.5cm thick, using the flat base of a glass through a spare piece of baking paper; remove that spare paper afterwards. Mark one line across the centre to make two 10cm-deep rows, then mark seven lines the other way at 2.5cm intervals, giving 16 fingers of about 2.5 × 10cm. Score partway through rather than lifting out pieces. Prick each finger in two places with a fork, pushing almost to the base without shredding the dough.

Chill and preheat

Refrigerate the tin for 30 minutes. After the first 10 minutes of chilling, start preheating the oven to 160°C conventional / 140°C fan, allowing 20 minutes for it to heat while the dough finishes chilling. Keep the dough refrigerated until the oven is ready if yours takes longer; that adds time to the schedule. Remove the tin from the fridge only when ready to bake.

Bake gently

Bake on the middle shelf for about 45 minutes, including loading and the endpoint check. The surface should look dry and set, with a pale biscuit colour across the centre and slightly more golden edges; it should not have a wet, shiny patch in the middle or deeply browned edges. Do not press a finger into the hot slab to judge firmness: it is fragile and firms as it cools. Oven performance and tin colour affect the timing, so continue baking if the centre still looks damp, allowing extra time rather than treating the clock as proof.

Cut while warm and finish

Put the tin on a heatproof trivet and leave the slab in it for 5 minutes. Then allow 3 minutes to cut all the way through the marked lines with a sharp knife or metal scraper, pressing straight down rather than sawing. Hold the tin steady with oven gloves, keep hands clear of the hot rim and avoid scraping a coated tin. Scatter the reserved 10g caster sugar evenly over the warm surface. Leave all the fingers sitting together in the tin; do not try to lift or separate them while hot.

Cool before lifting

Leave in the tin for a further 60 minutes, until completely cool, before lifting the slab by both paper handles onto a board. If the centre or tin is still warm, wait longer. Gently separate the fingers along the cut lines and place on a wire rack or serving plate. The finished biscuit should break with a gentle snap and crumble as you bite; a hot finger will seem much softer. Serve only once the fingers have cooled and become firm enough to handle.

Serving Suggestion

Serve a finger with a pot of breakfast tea or a small coffee. For a simple dessert, put a cooled finger beside fresh raspberries and vanilla ice cream, keeping the fruit off the biscuit until serving. These optional accompaniments are additional to the recipe quantities and timetable.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why use cornflour as well as plain flour?

A small proportion of cornflour reduces the wheat flour in the dough and gives a finer, more delicate crumb. Use white UK cornflour, meaning corn starch, not yellow cornmeal. This is still a wheat-containing biscuit; the cornflour does not make it gluten free.

Should the butter be cold or soft?

Cold, cubed butter suits this rubbing-in method. Work it into fine crumbs, then squeeze the mixture together without kneading it. There is no separate softening stage, and melted butter would change how the dough handles.

When should I cut the fingers?

Mark the grid before baking, cut through it after the brief 5-minute in-tin cooling stage, then leave the pieces together until fully cold. Waiting until the slab is completely cold to make the first full cuts can lead to uneven breaks; lifting hot fingers can make them crumble.

How pale should baked shortbread be?

Look for a dry, set surface with a pale biscuit-coloured centre and lightly golden edges, not a dark brown top. A shiny, damp-looking centre needs more baking. The butter-rich slab is fragile when hot, so softness alone is not a reliable reason to keep baking it.

Can I use a different size of tin?

The quantities and timing are written for a 20 × 20cm internal metal base. A larger tin makes a thinner biscuit that bakes faster, while a smaller one makes a thicker centre that takes longer. Keep to the stated tin rather than assuming the same timing will work in another shape or in glass.

Does the preparation time really include cooling?

The recipe display uses 118 minutes of preparation to include 23 minutes hands-on work, 30 minutes chilling and 65 minutes cooling. Add the 45-minute bake for about 2 hours 43 minutes overall. The oven heats during the chill, not as an extra stage. These are untested planning estimates; follow the oven-ready, dry-surface and fully-cool cues if a stage takes longer.