Blog

Feel like a biscuit? This recipe will make exactly one tasty piece of shortbread.

food safety hazard iconhot hazard iconSafety: Use clean hands and equipment. This activity requires a hot oven. Ask an adult for help.
First aid: If you burn yourself, run the burn under cold water for 20 minutes.

You will need

Brown batter in a bowl

Mix the butter, sugar and essence with a fork.

Ingredients

  • 15 g butter, softened
  • 10 mL caster sugar
  • 0.3 mL vanilla extract
  • 31 mL plain flour
  • 8 mL rice flour
  • Extra butter to grease the baking tray
  • Extra flour for kneading
  • 2mL caster sugar to sprinkle on top
    A sieve with flour in it.

    Sift the dry ingredients.

Equipment

  • Baking tray
  • Bowl
  • Fork
  • Sieve or sifter
  • Spoon
  • Measuring tools – a pharmacy will sell medicine cups and other tools for measuring small quantities.

What to do

A biscuit on a cooling rack.

Your completed shortbread.

  1. Preheat oven to 150°C and grease a baking tray.
  2. Use a fork to beat the butter, sugar and vanilla together in a bowl, until they are pale and fluffy.
  3. Sift the flours and mix them with the mixture, using a spoon. This is your shortbread dough.
  4. Sprinkle some extra flour on the bench, and gently knead your shortbread dough until it is smooth.
  5. Roll the shortbread dough into a layer about 8 mm thick and put it on the baking tray. Sprinkle with some extra sugar.
  6. Ask an adult to help you put the shortbread in the oven for around 40 minutes or until it starts turning golden.

What’s happening?

It takes a lot of work to make one piece of shortbread with this recipe. However, if you want to make more than one, you don’t need to make them one at a time. If you work out how many pieces you want, you can multiply the quantity of each ingredient and make a recipe for exactly the right number of biscuits for you. That way, you’ll only need to measure and mix once.

When you’re multiplying this recipe, you’ll have to be a bit careful. You need to multiply each of the ingredients, but you don’t need to multiply all the other numbers in the recipe. If you were making 10 pieces of shortbread, you wouldn’t need 10 bowls, and you certainly wouldn’t want to bake them at 1500°C. However, you might need a second baking tray, and the shortbread might take a few minutes longer to cook.

Real-life science

Food companies are very interested in scaling up recipes. When they come up with a new recipe, they first make it in small batches in a laboratory. If the recipe is promising, then they will scale it up to be made in their factory. Whenever a new recipe is scaled up, food scientists have to run tests. Sometimes when a recipe is scaled up, some costs increase a lot, and a recipe that looked good in the lab is too expensive to produce in the factory.

More information

An example of scaling up a cake recipe

If you’re after more science and maths activities for kids, subscribe to Double Helix magazine!

Subscribe now! button

2 responses

  1. Don Avatar
    Don

    Why is the measurement of some solid ingredients (sugar, flour) in mL?

    1. David Avatar
      David

      Hi Don,
      This activity was written in 2011, back when electronic scales were less common. Even now, many people don’t have scales that could measure, say 6 grams of rice flour, but measuring spoons or the measuring cups you use for cough syrup are pretty good for the task.
      If we were top do this activity again, we would probably include both volume and mass measurements

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

By submitting this form, you give CSIRO permission to publish your comments on our websites. Please make sure the comments are your own. For more information please see our terms and conditions.

Why choose the Double Helix magazine for your students?

Perfect for ages 8 – 14

Developed by experienced editors

Engaging and motivating

*84% of readers are more interested in science

Engaging students voice