Valentine Smith’s Scottish Shortbread “Wee Scotties”

(An old Nova Scotian/Scots recipe)

 

Kenneth Robert Seton of Nova Scotia

Of the Seton family line of Meldrum

 

 

3 Cups of Butter ( 1 ½ lbs)

1 ½ Cups Icing Sugar (Confectioners Sugar)

1 ½ Cups Cornstarch

4 Cups of Flour

5 teaspoons of Vanilla Extract (if using pure Vanilla, raw syrup, use lots more)

 

 

Have the butter VERY soft, almost runny, add icing sugar and cornstarch and ½ of the flour and beat with a fork until fluffy.  Add the rest and beat well with a fork. Roll into 1” to 1 ¼ “ size balls and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Flatte the balls slightly with a fork so that you leave distinct lines, but careful not over-flatten them, just slightly (this will provide a place for the icing to stick.

 

Note: you’ll know you have enough vanilla when there is an even balance in the taste between the butter, icing sugar and vanilla flavours.  Also, you’ll know that the texture of the dough is right when you can just BARELY roll into balls.  If the dough rolls too easily into balls, add a little cornstarch and icing sugar in equal amount until it is right. If it is too crumbly, add a little vanilla and butter.

 

Cook the Shortbread at 325 degrees for 20 minutes.  Check that the underside of the Shortbread is just barely golden and remouve immediately from the oven and the sheet.  After remouving from the oven and sheet, ice them immediately (this takes advance preparation) with icing below:

 

 

2/3 Cup of Butter

6 – 8 Cups of Icing Sugar

A tiny bit of Milk (barely any)

8 – 9 Teaspoons of Almond Flavouring

(it should be a STRONG flavour)

 

 

Roll the icing into balls about the size of your index finger, and have the amount ready for the batch about to come out of the oven and place on scalding hot Shortbread immediately and flatten onto cookie with your finger.

 

Place a cut-up piece of Marachino Cherry (about ½ the size of your pinkie nail) onto the iced-cookie and let settle for 1 day (very difficult to do).  In the end, they’ll look like little Highlanders with their “caps on, and red-pompoms”.

 

 

Serve on Christmas, Hogmanay and after dinner, preferably with good Scotch!

 

 

This recipe came to my grandmother from her husbands mother, Annie Lovett, who was a cousin of the Fraser’s Lord Lovat.  Lord Lovat had visited her in Nova Scotia when she was a young girl.  This was a recipe from the Frasers and originated in Aberdeen from around the early 18th century (1700’s) when Cornstarch and Confectioners Sugar were commodities only had by the Nobles and Chiefs, as they came from the colonies abroad.