Between the Walker’s, Lorna Doones and Pecan Sandies you just described my past few weeks. Only a few Lorna Doones left.
That’s easy. It’s in SHORT supply. 
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Yeah, a batch of the Nestle chocolate chip cookies makes several dozen (5 dozen is the quoted amount I saw), and uses 2 sticks of butter. Even if you go with bigger cookies, it’s still like 3 dozen.
By contrast, this shortbread recipe uses 3/4 of a lb of butter (3 sticks) for 20 cookies.
So in order to match the number of cookies, the shortbread recipe would take 2.25 lbs of butter instead of 1/2 lb.
I’ve actually made butter by hand.
The process is simple.
What makes it difficult is the required repetition of motion. Back in the days of doing it with human muscle power this could be onerous. With modern appliances/tools it’s not so bad.
For me, the real difficulty these days would be finding actual cream that isn’t mixed with other ingredients.
Look for organic or local and call up the source and ask. Which can make it even more expensive of course, but sometimes not. I found a dairy that sells most of theirs to restaurants but the pandemic caused them to open up to the locals. Now their back focusing on restaurants.
Yeah, something like that - my usual shopping haunts don’t carry unmixed pure cream so I have to go out of my usual way/patterns to get it.
I would have thought that having butter as such a major ingredient would decrease its shelf selling dates, especially if it’s imported - am I wrong?
No, you’re not wrong. Shortbread cookies made with butter (even salted butter) will turn rancid after a time. I cleared some out of a cabinet at a food product company that were about 9 - 12 months old; they were pretty foul. Made with non-cultured, salted butter.
Hey, thanks for pointing that out! I got to thinking about it, and I seemed to recall that Nabisco stopped using trans fats in their cookies awhile back. The ingredients list I posted must have been old. Here’s a current one:
Ingredients
Unbleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate {Vitamin B1}, Riboflavin {Vitamin B2}, Folic Acid), Sugar, Canola Oil, Palm Oil, Corn Flour, Salt, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Baking Soda, Soy Lecithin, Cornstarch, Artificial Flavor.Contains: Wheat, Soy.
Reading this column has stirred some ancient memories.
I first made shortbread around 1974. At the time, I knew an old Scottish woman who (I swear!) recommended cutting the butter with margarine. As I recall, I tried it once and was sorely disappointed with the quality of the finished product.
Has anyone else ever heard of this? (I never, ever use margarine in anything if I can avoid it.)
Also, which is better: shortbread made with salted or unsalted butter? I don’t think I’ve ever made it the second way.
Jamie Oliver once showed on TV how to make butter at home using a food processor. I had no idea it could be done so quickly.
The diffrence of making whipped cream or butter is the temperature of the cream.
This was learned on home ed in 5th grade.
No, but i once bought some coconut oil (solid at room temp) and my husband really disliked it, so i adapted a shortbread recipe to use it up, and have away most of the cookies. It didn’t taste like butter, it tasted like coconut, but it was quite tasty.
Well, sure. But do you grow your own alfalfa to feed the cow? And birth and rear your own calves? And make your own tractor to plow the field that grows the alfalfa that feeds the cow that makes the milk? And…
Lordy, mom would use margarine for everything except spritz cookies, where butter is part of the flavor. The doc had told her not to feed me butter as I was a roly-poly baby, never mind that the calorie count was the same. The baking industry was on board with using margarine because it was so much cheaper than butter. By the time I moved out of the parental home, I was using butter on almost everything. It makes such a huge difference in flavor and often in texture too.
Oooh - you’ve got a TRACTOR!
I’ve overwhipped cream to the point of butter. Wasn’t aware temperature was involved.
I confess, I do not mine and smelt all the ores needed to produce my tractor
Do you need gas for your tractor? I pump the crude and refine it myself in my kitchen.
I modified mine for methane and harvest my farts.
You think shortbread is expensive, try pricing some longbread.
mmm
What would these other ingredients be? Cream is just … cream. Isn’t it?