Three-ingredient shortbread

Photo: RecipeTin Eats

Butter, powdered sugar, flour. Nagi presses it into one pan and cuts it into Walker's-style fingers halfway through baking. If you've never baked anything, start here.

From Nagi Maehashi at RecipeTin Eats · @recipe_tin

Just butter, powdered sugar and flour, pressed into one pan, cut into fingers halfway through a low bake and finished pale gold.

You need

• 1 cup (250 g) salted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup (90 g) powdered sugar
• 2 cups (300 g) all-purpose flour

How to make it

1. Heat the oven to 325°F (300°F fan). Butter a 9 x 13-inch pan and line it with parchment that hangs over the sides.
2. Beat the butter until smooth, then beat in the powdered sugar.
3. Add half the flour and beat until it looks like wet sand, then beat in the rest. Bring it together with your hands into a ball.
4. Press the dough evenly into the pan and smooth the top (a small glass rolled over it works).
5. Bake 20 minutes, until the edges are very light golden.
6. Working quickly, cut it in the pan into 24 fingers (8 by 3) and prick each a few times with a fork.
7. Bake 8 minutes more, until light golden, not brown. Turn the oven off, prop the door open and leave it 20 minutes.
8. Lift out with the parchment, break into fingers along the cuts and cool completely on a rack.

For a swap: Sturdy, and it keeps for weeks in a tin.

Written in our own words from Nagi Maehashi's recipe, with their quantities. The original: Three-ingredient shortbread, RecipeTin Eats.

More from the list