Brown Butter Shortbread Bars

These Brown Butter Shortbread Bars are deliciously nutty, buttery, and flaky. The combination of the browned butter, vanilla, brown sugar, powdered sugar, and flour makes for perfectly tender shortbread with such depth of flavor. They're great for any time of year, but especially the holiday season with a cup of tea or hot chocolate.

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• Ingredients
• Step by step instructions
• Tips and tricks
• Customize the recipe
• Make ahead instructions 
• Storage 
• FAQs
• More cookie recipes
• Recipe

Ingredients

Just six ingredients are needed to make these brown butter shortbread bars, and ones you very likely have in your cupboard! 

• Butter: since butter brings a lot of flavor to this shortbread, it’s best to use a high quality butter like Kerrygold. 
  • I tested this recipe with both salted and unsalted butter, it turned out great both times. If you use salted butter, add 1 teaspoon salt. If you use unsalted butter, add 2 teaspoon salt. It may seem like a lot, but this cookie has a lot of sugar and butter so it really needs the salt to balance the flavor appropriately.
• You could use salted butter but reduce the amount of added salt by half. 
• Vanilla: either vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste.
• Powdered sugar: gives shortbread the classic crumbly texture.
• Brown sugar: a little brown sugar in this recipe pairs really well with the browned butter for a richer flavor. I use light brown sugar but you could also use dark brown sugar.
• Flour: standard all purpose flour helps give these shortbread cookies the perfect crumb. 
• Salt: kosher salt is used to balance out the sweetness.

Step by step instructions

Check out the below instructions to make this shortbread cookie recipe. Full recipe card is at the end of this post.

1. Brown the butter. In a light colored medium saucepan or pot (so you can see the browning), melt butter on medium heat. Cook, stirring frequently for about 10 minutes until you see brown flecks. Once browned, pour into a medium bowl to cool for at least 10 minutes. Make sure you get all the brown bits out of the pot.

• Visual cues – as the water evaporates out it’ll sizzle, and then once it starts to foam and get frothy, stir it constantly as this is when the browning happens. The milk solids (dots) on the bottom of the pan will start to turn a light brown and continue to get deeper in color. You’re looking for an amber color.
• Smell cues – the butter will go from a very overtly buttery smell, to having a nutty smell.

2. Mix the brown butter and vanilla. Pour the vanilla into the bowl with the browned butter. Mix together using a wooden spoon or spatula. 

3. Mix remaining ingredients. In a separate medium-sized bowl, mix together the flour, brown sugar, powdered sugar, and salt. 

4. Combine. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix together until fully combined and the dough forms. 

5. Add to a baking pan. Line an 8x8 baking pan with parchment paper. Transfer the shortbread dough into the pan and press into an even layer. 

6. Bake. Bake at 325°F until golden brown on top, 30-35 minutes. Let it cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and cut into pieces using a sharp knife.

Tips and tricks

• HIGHLY recommend using a kitchen scale for this recipe. If you do not have one, then make sure you measure your flour properly. The “spoon and level” method is ideal. Fluff it up with the spoon, then gently pour it into the measuring cup, and level it off. Do not shake it or pat it down as you’ll end up with too much flour. 
• Let the butter cool for about 30 minutes before mixing it with the other ingredients. It doesn’t need to be fully cool, but you don’t want it to be fresh off the stovetop because the residual heat will mess with the texture of the shortbread. 
• Don’t use cooking spray on the baking pan. These shortbread bars are very full of butter which will do enough for non-stick. If you spray the pan it’ll be too greasy and you’ll get a lot of residual grease on your shortbread. 
• Leave an overhang of parchment paper so you can lift the bars right out of the pan. 
• Let them cool in the pan for at least 15 minutes before you take them out and cut them. They are crumbly and fragile, and giving them 15 minutes to set is important. But do not let them cool completely before cutting them as they'll likely crumble a bit too much.
• You could make them into circles instead. To do so, shape the cookie dough into a 3 inch-diameter log (and roll in turbinado sugar if you want to be fancy). Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer for about 30 minutes. Cut the frozen dough into ½” slices. Transfer the dough slices to a lined cookie sheet and bake at 350°F for 12-15 minutes until lightly golden brown. 
• You can use a stand mixer / electric mixer to make the dough. Use a paddle attachment and combine everything on medium speed.
• Incredibly detailed instructions on how to brown butter can be found here.

Customize the recipe

While these cookies are very very delicious as-is, you can add some additional ingredients to make them your own.

• Finely chopped nuts such as pecans or walnuts
• Citrus zest (orange would be particularly good)
• A little spice (cardamom, nutmeg)
• Dip them in some melted chocolate after they've baked and cooled

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Make ahead instructions 

Fridge: Make the dough up to 1 week in advance and store in the fridge in an airtight container. Allow it to come to room temp for about 30 minutes before putting it into the pan. 

Freezer: Make the dough up to 3 months in advance if stored in the fridge. If you do this, you’re better off doing the slice and bake method. So prep the dough into a 3 inch (in diameter) log and when ready to bake, slice into half inch rounds. Then bake at 350°F for 15-20 minutes until golden. 

Storage 

Store these cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for 1 week or in the fridge for 2 weeks.

FAQs

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