Air Fryer Shortbread. How to air fry shortbread fingers, shortbread cookies and shortbread chocolate cookie balls. Easy to follow beginner recipes perfect for those that want to master shortbread in the air fryer.
Today, we are sharing with you our favourite different methods of air frying shortbread. Discover just how easy it to make Scottish shortbread with just 3 simple ingredients.
Air Fryer Shortbread
I love shortbread in the air fryer. I don’t think I said that loud enough I LOVE shortbread. The way it melts in your mouth, the way it breaks away when you eat it, how rich it is because of the butter and of course how easy it is to make.
When I was growing up my mum and dad had this lovely book keeper to help them with their accounts.
He was called Jim and at the time he was in his 60’s and had a really broad Scottish accent and I used to love the way he would say “Samantha” it just sounded do much better than the way my mum would screech it around the supermarket.
At Christmas as a Christmas gift he would always bring us some Scottish homemade shortbread and it tasted amazing. It would always be gone in 10 minutes and we all thought it was the most delicious cookie we had ever eaten.
Ever since then we have become addicted to shortbread. However due to the high quantity of butter in it we have to save it for special occasions otherwise we would end up super fat and super unhealthy.
But for a treat once in a while, it is delicious and well worth making. Oh, and did I mention the preparation on it is super-fast?
Air Fryer Shortbread Cookies
Today, I wanted to combine many of my shortbread recipes in the air fryer into one big recipe. A recipe that can turn to whenever you want to cook shortbread and it gives you lots of different ideas.
Originally published in 2016 and 2017 these new ideas can give you a new way to enjoy cookies and baked goods in the air fryer.
I also love shortbread as a cookies base for when you want to add in favourite ingredients or use up leftover chocolate.
What Is Shortbread?
If you are not familiar with shortbread it is the Scottish biscuit or as Americans call it, cookie. Famous throughout Scotland and the world, shortbread is rich thanks to its high butter content and perfect for afternoon tea.
Shortbread consists of just butter, sugar and flour. Due to the high level of butter, the butter binds it together without the need for milk or eggs.
It also saves washing up as you don’t need one bowl for dry ingredients and one bowl for wet ingredients.
Classic Air Fryer Shortbread
The classic shortbread that we make the most in the air fryer and is what you see in the recipe card below is like the shortbread fingers.
It just combines the 3 ingredients and nothing else is used in the recipe. That is butter, flour and sugar.
The flour and sugar are added to the bowl first and the fat is rubbed into the flour. It creates incredibly thick breadcrumbs that with a bit of kneading will become a beautiful soft shortbread dough ball like you see below:
You then roll it out and make whatever shapes you like. Whether this is fingers, rounds or using your shaped cookie cutters.
It also gives you a standard shortbread cookie dough that you can use on a lot of different air fryer shortbread recipes.
Air Fryer Shortbread Chocolate Balls
This is my guilty pleasure in the air fryer. When you place your 3 ingredients into a bowl to mix them, add in 30g of cocoa powder and make as usual. This will produce chocolate heaven shortbread.
Then roll them into balls and cook as usual.
Air Fryer Shortbread Leftovers
Make the chocolate balls that I mentioned above. But at the end, place a piece of chocolate into the centre and you will have balls of heaven.
You don’t need to use the cocoa you can make them plain with your favourite chocolate in the centre. For example, we like to add leftover Roses Chocolates in ours.
Well, if the kids leave us any!
Air Fryer Shortbread & Cream
To make your own air fryer shortbread and cream is EASY. Using a cookie cutter make your cookies into thick rounds. Then make your own homemade cream and when they are cooked sandwich them together.
Air Fryer Shortbread Heart Cookies
Simply use a heart cookie cutter to make air fryer shortbread cookies and follow our classic air fryer shortbread recipe.
Then when they are 50% cooked and some extra chocolate chips to the top of them and you are DONE.
What You Need For Air Fryer Shortbread?
There are 3 main ingredients that go into air fryer shortbread:
Then you can add in your favourite extras:
- Vanilla Essence
- Chocolate Chips
- Cocoa Powder
- Leftover Chocolate
Then of course you need your kitchen gadgets:
You don’t need a hand mixer or other kitchen gadgets, as the shortbread dough comes together so well in your hands.
You can use either an air fryer grill pan or an air fryer baking mat for cooking your shortbread cookies. This stops them from sticking to the air fryer and assures that they cook flat.
The Air Fryer Recipe Ebook
To celebrate our love for our air fryer and our readers addiction to our air fryer recipes, we converted all our air fryer recipes into an ebook.
You can download all our recipes including this air fryer shortbread recipe (which will be in the next edition) in an easy to digest PDF.
Click Here To Download It Instantly.
We also update it quarterly so that premium air fryer customers can get a new Ebook each time there are updates.
How To Air Fry Shortbread?
- Place your flour, sugar and butter into a mixing bowl.
- Using your hands rub the butter into the flour until you have fat breadcrumbs.
- Knead into a ball and then roll and shape with your cutters.
- Cook in the air fryer and serve warm.
More Cookie Recipes
Here are 3 more of our favourite cookie recipes at Recipe This:
- Air Fryer Chocolate Chip Cookies – Our original chocolate chip cookies in the air fryer. Though I can never just have one of them!
- Air Fryer Smartie Cookies – A chocolate loaded alternative to chocolate chip cookies. Use your favourite chocolate or any leftovers you have.
- Air Fryer Dark Chunk Cookies – I find chocolate chips overpriced. Instead I prefer to break up some dark chocolate and make these chunk cookies instead.
Air Fryer Shortbread
Ingredients
Air Fryer Shortbread Recipe Ingredients:
- 250 g Self Raising Flour
- 175 g Butter
- 75 g Caster Sugar
Optional Ingredients:
Instructions
- Place in a bowl your self raising flour, butter and caster sugar.
- Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles thick breadcrumbs.
- Knead until you have a shortbread dough ball and then roll out with your rolling pin.
- Cut using cookie cutters into your favourite shapes.
- Cook your shortbread on either your air fryer grill pan or an air fryer baking mat inside your air fryer. Set the temperature to 180c/360f and the time to 10 minutes.
- Allow to cool a little before serving.
Notes
Nutrition
Can’t make it now? Then pin it for later!
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Stephanie says
I’m curious – how do these come out compared to in the oven? Texture-wise, I mean! They certainly look yummy 🙂