Just when you thought all your luck ran out when trying to make crispy butter shortbread cookies, Missy saves the day!

Some of the most difficult things to perfect in baking are: a really good chocolate chip cookie, a good loaf of white bread, a tender pie crust, a flavorful vanilla cake, and simple butter shortbread cookies. These basic flavors and textures are important to get right because they are so familiar to the American palette. They are some of the most challenging recipes I have worked on. 

Crisp Magic

I’ve been testing vanilla shortbread for quite some time. It needs to melt in the mouth and be lightly crisp, but not crunchy. After a decade of sporadic testing, I decided to apply what I knew worked in my Black & White Chocolate Shortbread Cookie. The perfect crisp texture of the chocolate shortbread comes from using melted chocolate chips mixed into the butter. Something magical happens and it turns out stunning every time. 

I worried that using white chocolate in vanilla shortbread would make it taste like white chocolate. I wasted needless time worrying because it works great! I am so pleased to share this Irish Butter Perfectly Crisp Shortbread recipe with you. 

One tip that will help is to use room temperature butter. Beat it until it is silky smooth and fluffy. Once you pour in the melted white chocolate be sure to start mixing it immediately before it has a chance to start hardening. I used Kerrygold Irish salted butter in this recipe, but regular American butter is fine too. 

How to Dress Up this Shortbread

This Perfectly Crisp Shortbread is delicious on its own. If you want to dress it up and add a bit of sweetness and crunch, try sprinkling with white sparkling sugar before baking. I like to dip these plain shortbread into melted Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate after they cool. If you don’t temper the chocolate, be sure to store these in the fridge to avoid blooming. 

You can cut this dough into any shape. Using the shamrock cookie cutter seemed appropriate the day I made these because of the Irish butter I used. You could use geometric shapes to make them stand out on a church potluck table or cut them into fun shapes for a children’s birthday party.

My whole family gives this Irish Butter Perfectly Crispy Shortbread a thumbs up. I delivered some to my in-laws and received a rare text from them that said, “Shortbread cookie is good,” with a smiling emoji!

Let me know in the comments how you feel about this cookie’s crispness!