Delicious, buttery, crumbly shortbread with a touch of chocolate
I found this simple, 4-ingredient recipe on the Fitwaffle account on TikTok. It’s great for anyone who hates fuss and mess: you just need one bowl and one baking tray so there’s hardly any washing up.
Ingredients (makes 16-24 shortbread bars depending on how large you cut them):
- 225 g / 8 oz butter, softened and chopped into small cubes
- 320 g / 11.3 oz plain flour
- 115 g / 4 oz granulated sugar
- 100g / 3.5 oz chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate, but you can use your favourite, or you could use nuts if you prefer)
Method:
Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees C (160 C fan/ 356 degrees F/ Gas Mark 4).
Line an 8-inch (20cm) square baking tin/brownie pan with greaseproof baking paper. My tin is rectangular rather than square, so a different shaped tin which has roughly the same volume will be fine. Just make sure your tin isn’t too large or your shortbread will be disappointingly thin.
Put the butter, flour and sugar into a large mixing bowl. Use your hands to rub the ingredients together until it has a breadcrumb consistency.
Add 90g of the chocolate chips to the mixture and stir through using a spatula or wooden spoon (you can use your hands, but I’d washed mine by this point and didn’t want to get them covered in mixture again!).
Tip the mixture into your prepared baking tin.
Use the back of a spoon to push the mixture out to the edges of the tin and flatten it to form an even, tightly-packed layer. Now use the remaining 10g of chocolate chips: push them into the shortbread dough wherever there are gaps in the chocolate chip distribution.
As an optional final step, you can sprinkle a tablespoonful of sugar over the top of the dough before baking. This will ensure you get a golden finish to the shortbread.
Put your chocolate chip shortbread dough into the oven to bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown on top. Once baked, remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin.
Once cool, remove from the tin and slice into rectangles or squares. You can easily get 16 large bars, or more smaller bars.
Store the choc chip shortbread bars in an airtight container in a cool, dry place and they will keep for up to to four days. Good luck making it last that long!
A plea from this baker/writer
If you’ve read this far and have found this recipe, or any of my recipes useful, please consider returning the favour by buying one of my romcoms! The ebooks cost less than a coffee and are FREE with Kindle Unlimited.
Claire Huston / Art and Soul
