I’ve been baking for a few years now. I’ve improved as time has passed and I’m always looking out for a new challenge. As normally happens, I stumbled into trying to bake shortbread quite by accident. I bought a new (second hand) baking book by Mary Berry called Simple Comforts – As an aside, this book is over £20 on Amazon. I found it second hand for less than half of that on WOB. I saw it for £2.99 in a Charity shop last week!
Back to making shortbread – I wanted a bake I could make with my Granddaughter who was staying with us. She’s joined me on my baking journey, and likes to bake, so we perused the book and decided to take on the Lemon Shortbread with Raspberries and Cream bake, pictured above. It looked fairly straightforward and was something we could work on together.
As with a lot of bakes I try, I usually improve the end result on subsequent attempts at the same recipe. That was certainly the case with making shortbread. Our initial shortbread tasted great but we had to handle it very carefully. We cracked half of the top and bottom sheets, either whilst cutting the shortbread or removing it from the tray. We were still able to assemble most of our raspberry slices.
We found out, by accident, that keeping the baked shortbread in the fridge, after it had been baked, made it a lot easier to handle. The recipe yielded nine slices and they all disappeared the same day. Everyone really liked them.
Yesterday I made slices again. With some thought out, and some accidental tweaks, I was able to make a batch of shortbread that didn’t break off or crack. Those tweaks included baking the shortbread in a non fan oven. Cutting the shortbread whilst it was still warm and then putting it in the fridge, for a while, prior to the slice assembly. We tried spreading the cream on to the slices on our initial attempt. Piping the cream on yesterdays slices worked far better.
These slices are really good and will become a staple bake for me. They’re easy to make and they look good and taste great. As an added bonus I’ll be posting the images to my stock agency. I’ve sold a lot of food pics this year and I find traditional bakes, like shortbread, sell well.
Following on from the slices I took on another recipe from the book for Orange Shortbread Fingers. They’ve turned out really well and taste delicious. I can see them being baked again, with the grandchildren, closer to Xmas to give away as gifts. Here’s a link to the recipe: Mary Berry – Orange Shortbread Fingers
If anyone reading this has any hints and tips for baking shortbread I’m more than open to some advice. I’ve read online tips about leaving the dough in the fridge overnight before baking etc. There’s nothing better than learning from someone else’s experience though.
All images: ©Stephen Hyde 2007-2025 – All rights reserved.
Steve Hyde 
Love this post, us Scots invented shortbread, although I can’t take too much credit as it was hundreds of years ago! I have never tried to make shortbread but will look out the book you have posted. If you ever visit Edinburgh there is a place called the Shortbread House of Edinburgh, everything is handmade and family run, they sell the most amazing shortbreads 😍
Thank you Tyler. We need to visit Scotland. I’ve never been but it’s in our plans for seeing more of the UK. That book is a bit pricier at the moment because the BBC are re running the TV series that went along with it. I think I saw that Edinburgh shortbread place when I was researching shortbread images. Thanks for the tip. We’re off back to Marrakech in November (TUI prices for Medina Gardens where we stay were really good on certain dates, December even better). Anyway as part of research for that I stumbled across this VBlogger who is worth checking out if you ever go back to Morocco. – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TooqI0DWFQI
Wow, excited for you to see Scotland, it’s an awesome country, just remember to wrap up warm, even in the Summer!
Hope you & Linda enjoy Marrakech, looking forward to seeing your post/photos on it. I am looking at going back around January as the Ryanair flights are so cheap & with the cost of electricity in the UK, it’s probably cheaper to fly there for the Winter sun than it is to put the heating on here 😂.
That video was really cool, I didn’t venture outside of the City centre, so the mountains etc are on my hitlist. I will give that YouTube blogger a follow, thanks for the tip.
I think she’s good. We’ve booked the same excursion so I’ll let you know how that goes. It’s booked through Air BnB, a new one for us. We had thought about getting a train over to Casablanca but her video on that put me off. I’d need longer then a day there I think.
Definitely seems like more than a days worth, otherwise you are rushing to get round everything without the time to really experience it! Keen to see what you make of Air BnB, I am an old dinosaur still stuck in the booking.com bubble 😂
Beautiful images of the short bread! What a lovely thing to do with your granddaughter!
Thank you Pamela. Bel’s always keen to try a bake. Don’t get me wrong, she likes her time surfing TikTok etc but she’ll ask if we can bake if I haven’t suggested anything. She has a light touch and her crumbles are better than mine.
Lemon and raspberries together sounds good. I may have to look up that recipe because we have a ton of raspberries in our garden this year. Great first picture!
I love shortbread, the pictures look so good! A little tip when baking is to make sure not to overmix, I used to bake this all the time with my grandma. Hope this helps, ur dessert looks so good!
Thank you Shelbi. I keep reading about over mixing in all the cookery books I have. It seems that nearly everything benefits from a lighter touch 🙂