Brown Butter Shortbread with Flaky Sea Salt

☕🥐🐈🔍

From Piper's Recipe Box

Brown Butter Shortbread

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Four ingredients, no excuses

Prep

15 min + chill

Bake

35–40 min

Makes

16 fingers

Shortbread has nowhere to hide. Four ingredients, no leavening, no frosting to cover a multitude of sins. Which means the only thing that makes it interesting is what you do to the butter first, and what you do to the butter first is stand over it until it smells like toasted hazelnuts and then pull it off a few seconds before you think you should.

You'll Need

• 2 sticks butter — good butter, this is the entire recipe
• ½ cup powdered sugar · 1 tsp vanilla
• 1¾ cups flour · ½ tsp flaky salt, plus more for the top

What To Do

1. Brown the butter over medium heat, swirling, until the foam subsides and the solids at the bottom go properly golden and smell nutty. Pour it into a bowl, scraping in every brown speck, and chill until it is solid but soft — about an hour.
2. Beat the cooled brown butter with the powdered sugar and vanilla until it is pale and a bit fluffy.
3. Fold in the flour and salt. It will look too dry and then suddenly it will not. Press into a lined 8x8 pan, prick all over with a fork, and chill 30 minutes.
4. Bake at 325°F for 35–40 minutes until the edges are deep gold. Scatter flaky salt over the top and cut it into fingers while it is still hot, then leave it in the pan to cool completely.

Cutting it hot and cooling it in the pan is the whole trick. Cut it cold and it shatters; lift it hot and it collapses. Hot cut, cold lift.

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