Lemon, Rosemary and Olive Oil Shortbread
Light and crisp, sweet and savory shortbread made with olive oil instead of butter. So easy to make, no mixer required!
Updated by Kathryne Taylor on September 19, 2024
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My grandmother Mimi was known for her homemade shortbread. Unfortunately, I can’t remember ever tasting her shortbread. She was 70 years old when I was born and, naturally, her cooking aspirations declined with age. By the time I was old enough to help in the kitchen, she wasn’t doing much cooking. We made old-fashioned fudge together, I remember that. She always served me bacon and Welch’s grape fruit for breakfast because it was just what I wanted.
I pick up on little tidbits about Mimi’s cooking from my dad, like that she fried her grilled cheese sandwiches with some shredded cheese on the outside like I do. And last winter, the scent of my friend’s pot roast almost brought me to my knees—not because I love the smell of beef, but because it took me back in time to Mimi’s kitchen.
Mimi was born in 1915, the last of five children. My great grandmother’s family came from Scotland so maybe shortbread runs in the blood. Rumor has it that in high school, Mimi decided to add an “e” to the end of her middle name because she liked the extra flourish it provided. Mildred Kathryne looks nice, I think. She had two sons, seventeen years apart, with my grandfather. The love of her life. When I was little, their exceptional fondness for one another was as real and warm as Mimi’s soft cashmere sweaters.
The subject of Mimi’s shortbread tends to come up around the holidays. I have wanted to attempt it for a while now, but I was afraid mine might not match up. After all, I don’t know what her shortbread tasted like. I don’t know if she shaped it into round cookies or petticoat tails. I’m not sure I have her recipe. All I know is that I have her brown eyes, her long piano fingers and her name. Surely that counts for something.
Since Mimi isn’t here for me to ask about shortbread, I conceded that I would just have to figure it out the hard way, through intuition and trial and error. I would have to come up with my own favorite version. Then California Olive Ranch, makers of my favorite, go-to olive oil, challenged me to come up with a holiday treat made with olive oil instead of butter.
I thought that since I’m making this shortbread my own, I’d try it with olive oil. Not because I have any problem at all with Mimi’s buttery shortbread—she lived to 90 and I don’t think butter did her any harm—but because the concept of an herbal, lemony, sweet and savory olive oil shortbread appealed to me. Plus, using olive oil instead of butter would make the recipe dairy free/vegan, so more people could enjoy it at holiday parties. I picked up a bottle of California Olive Ranch’s everyday olive oil for a little over ten dollars at the local health food store and got to work.
I found a recipe for Scotch shortbread in Mimi’s tattered copy of Joy of Cooking, so that seemed like a good place to start. I went online and read about standard ingredient ratios for shortbread and the history of shortbread (it was first made in Scotland out of oat flour). Oat flour sounded like a good idea to me at first, since I could then share the cookies with my gluten-free friends. My oat flour and olive oil shortbread was a mess of crumbs, though.
Four batches of shortbread later, I have finalized my own shortbread recipe. I think Mimi would approve. I ended up using white whole wheat flour, which holds together a little better than the oat flour and is more manageable than whole wheat pastry flour. I added sea salt to enhance the complex flavors found in the olive oil. I also had the best luck with baking the shortbread in a square baker; no matter how long I chilled the dough, it was still difficult to shape into rounds. The method written below yielded the best texture and flavor. Be sure to follow the instructions about cooling the shortbread a little before slicing or it will crumble on you.
Lemon, Rosemary and Olive Oil Shortbread
Light and crisp, sweet and savory shortbread made with olive oil instead of butter.
Ingredients
- 3 cups white whole wheat flour
- 1 ¼ cups powdered sugar (yields sweet shortbread, scale back to 1 cup or just ¾ cup for less sweet/more savory cookies)
- 1 teaspoon fine salt
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
- Zest of 2 lemons (preferably organic)
- 1 cup California Olive Ranch Everyday Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, salt, rosemary and lemon zest. Pour in the olive oil and stir until all of the dry mixture is incorporated.
- Transfer the dough to a 9 by 9-inch baker (my porcelain one didn’t require greasing, but you might want to grease your pan first to be safe). Use your fingers to squish the dough into an even layer. Prick the surface of the dough all over with a fork (a diagonal pattern looks nice).
- Bake until the surface feels firm to the touch and is lightly golden around the edges (keep an eye on it), about 45 to 55 minutes.
- Remove from oven and let the pan cool for 20 minutes (no sooner and no later!). Then, using a very sharp knife, slice the shortbread into 8 even columns and 4 even rows (cookies will be roughly 1 inch wide by 2 ½ inches long). Try to let the cookies cool some more before using a small spatula to remove them from the pan, or serve them directly from the pan.
Notes
- Recipe adapted, through trial and error, from Joy of Cooking and Wendy Paul Creations.
- Yields about 32 cookies.
- I think a gluten-free flour blend would work well here. If you want to try using oat flour, you’ll need to use at least 3 ½ cups (or more) since oat flour weighs less by volume than whole wheat flour.
- *Make your own powdered sugar: pour 1 cup sugar into a blender or food processor and blend until fine and fluffy. I used fine grain organic cane sugar.
- Recipe updated 12/22: temperature reduced by 25 degrees and baking time extended to reduce browning of the olive oil. Many, many apologies to anyone whose shortbread got too toasty around the edges. 350 degrees works great if you chill the dough before baking, but 325 is best for room temperature dough.
Nutrition
The information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. See our full nutrition disclosure here.
This post is sponsored by California Olive Ranch and I received compensation for my participation. Thank you for supporting the sponsors who allow me to serve up more recipes. Opinions are my own, always.
We wanted dessert, but it had to be vegan. We had pears and apples in the salad, so tarts were out. Saw this one and thought we’d try it. We went with the savory option (which I can happily endorse), had a live rosemary plant we were snipping from, only use California Olive Ranch anyway.
Unfortunately, we were ready to put it in the oven when I discovered that I had no 9×9 pan, only 8×8. So we were worried about it not cooking evenly at the temp and time recommended, but I used my glass pan and it came out fine. I had also forgotten about the need for something veg to grease the pan with, and at the last minute was reduced to wiping it with a little of the olive oil–I can testify that this works just fine.
These were the perfect small, light end to a heavy meal. Made up a fresh pot of French pressed coffee to go with and it really completed the meal.
Made these for the first time–added a 1/4 tsp lemon oil…the whole fam loves them! Going to be a great addition to our holiday table…:)
Thanks so much Kate for all your colourful, tasteful, smellful -I guess I can invent new words as a non-native speaker ;) – recipes
I have been cooking for years following your recipes (online and from your cookbook) and never left a comment but thought it’s about time.
Have backed this delicious shortbread this morning and the pan is almost already empty… (The house was awake particularly early this morning).
I was first worried when I realised I had almost no olive oil left, but then I used Orange-Olive Oil and I must admit the subtle Orangy note in the background goes really well with the lemony one!
Wishing you, and cookie, a lovely Xmas all the way from cold Berlin!
Helene
Thank you for your sweet comment, Helene! I appreciate your review and love to hear you are enjoying so many recipes.
I love the taste and ingredient mix here, having just returned from Italy. Do wonder if 9×9 is a typo? Seem too thick? I needed a full 9×13 so did 1.5 x recipe, but it filled my 9×23 with pretty high cookies which weren’t cooked through. Flavor is great but I’m thinking the recipe is meant for a 9×13” pan?
This was again a hit at an annual Christmas party. Successfully substituted whole wheat flour for the white whole wheat (because I picked up the wrong bag earlier in the week). Prefer the latter, but both delicious. And I made it on parchment — easier to cut and a bonus to keep the odd-looking bits for myself. Yum!
Thank you for sharing, Paula!
I loved this story, and I look forward to trying out the recipe! My family is of Scottish heritage as well.
I made this shortbread gluten free in half proportions with 1/4 ground almond, 3/4 rice flour, and orange zest instead of lemon; cooked it slightly hotter and for less time (still until firm/lightly golden). Absolutely gorgeous.
Made these last night and they were amazing!! I couldn’t believe how similar they were to a “normal” shortbread. We didn’t have lemon, so used orange instead. Worked very well. Thank you, Kate!!
I was skeptical about this shortbread recipe but was pleasantly surprised. It was simple and easy to make and the combination of rosemary, lemon and olive oil are to die for and also had the right shortbread consistency. The only thing I added was some coarse sugar crystals sprinkled over the top just before baking which gave them a nice finish. By accident, I put 2 tlbs. of rosemary but since they are so good I will keep it that way. Thanks so much for this healthy recipe!
Happy to hear you were surprised. I appreciate your review!
struggling to get a hold of white whole wheat flour here in the UK, I see a few people have substituted it for various other things but Kate is there a flour you would personally recommend and in theory would I have to change the amount used of said flour?
Hi Elisabeth! I believe you could use regular whole wheat flour, which will impart some nutty flavor, or all-purpose flour. I don’t think you’ll need to adjust the amounts for either of those. Someday, I’d love to try these with oat flour, but I think that would require more tinkering.
thank you so much for that! so excited to give these a try and the oat flour sounds wonderful :)
You’re welcome!
The dough does not want to bind nor unite.
I eventually put vanilla essence, 5tbsp cashew milk, 50gr honey, and 1 egg (cause im not vegan and the dough still does not wanna bind even after the cashew milk).
Sorry :(
I had the same problem. Followed the recipe to a T and still has this issue. First time a recipe on this blog didn’t work out for me. I must have reread the ingredients and instructions a dozen times.
I’m sorry to hear that, John. Thank you for your feedback.
I haven’t made these yet, but I plan to! I just cut the last of my rosemary from my garden before a frost tonight, and I am looking for recipes to use it up. I would love to make these but save for later- do they freeze well? Thank you! My college age daughter and I love ALL your recipes, especially the vegan ones. :)
Hi! I hope you love it, Connie. I don’t freeze all my recipes, but I do know others tend to freeze these types of recipes without issues. Let me know how it turns out for you!
I found a meat cleaver using a downward rocking motion was perfect for cutting. First shortbread so thanks for making learning curve easy and fruitful.
It took me a little after sampling that I realized how wonderful they are.
Blessings,
Charlie
Wow! I’m very impressed. Made a couple of mistakes, a few notes to improve these next time, but they came out really well for a first take. I was looking for a non-dairy shortbread and these totally hit the spot. Didn’t think I’d love the note of rosemary, but it’s really interesting.
For those who don’t like the “bits” of rosemary, I had an idea. I haven’t tried it yet, but strongly suspect it will work. Slip 2-3 sprigs of rosemary into regular sugar a couple of days ahead of time, like I’ve done before to make lemon sugar. Then, take out the rosemary and finely pulverize the sugar. You’ll then have the rosemary flavour without the bits. I’m going to try it next time!
A friend offered me this shortbread with a glass of wine. Her friend made it and gave it to her. I LOVED it and chased her down for the recipe for 10 months. Finally got it and tried. What a disaster…it was inedible and believe me I tried. I followed the recipe with 2 exceptions. I used white all-purpose flour instead of white whole wheat flour. The pyrex dish I baked it in was rectangular not square. Hard to believe these two things could make such a difference. The bars cut fine but fell apart when I tried to carefully lift from pan. What I was able to get to my mouth in one piece crumbled completely upon the first bite. It was like eating sawdust and could have choked a horse. No amount of wine could do the trick. I will try again with the whole wheat flour and really hope it makes a difference. They were memorable when they were done right. Any suggestions are appreciated. I hesitate to rate based on my first experience.
Hi Linda, I’m sorry to hear that. Are you sure all your ingredients were fresh? Baking is really precise and changing one thing can really impact your results.
Delicious! But there were a few challenges. It took some tender manipulation to get the dough to bind, and on the first taste out of the oven, I didn’t like the sweet and rosemary together. (I used icing sugar, which I will not do again.) Cutting them up they were very, very crumbie and my cookies were kind of strange looking. I had made them to take to dairy-free friends and I was having second thoughts as I packed them up. But the gang loved them and so did I! They just needed to settle I guess. Thank you so much.
One picky detail. In your story of Mimi – which I loved – I’m pretty sure that you mean Welch’s grape JUICE not FRUIT. The purple mustache-making juice was one of my born-in-1915 Mom’s treats as well. Love your recipes and site.
Wow these are my fave flavours, looking forward to trying this! Would all purpose flour work here?
Love this website and have repeatedly used many recipes we enjoy. I had an idea that this would be a good experiment. It has surpassed all of my expectations! I don’t mention to friends and family the ingredients so they would try it. So far it has gotten 100% amazing reviews. Crazy good stuff!
That’s great! Thank you for sharing, Beth.
Oh Wow – this recipe is awesome. Starting from the amazing aromas that filled the house when it was baking.
I ended up making some modifications in order to make use of things that I had on hand:
1) substitued1/2 cup of butter for 1/3 of the olive oil (so used 2/3 cup instead of 1 cup olive oil) because I had already softened some butter not expecting to find an olive oil recipe.
2) 7×11 pan because that is what I had. Bake for only 40 mins with that.
3) whole wheat pastry flour because I had that on hand
Thank you for sharing!
These were awesome! and the whole house smelled dreamy.
I substituted a little to work with ingredients that I had on hand:
1) used Whole Wheat Pastry flour because that is what I had.
2) used some butter instead of all olive because I had already softened it
3) used a 7×11 pan, and so the cooking time needed to be lowered.
hi, could I omit the sugar completely? I was looking for a vegan savoury cookie recipe and yours hit the spot !
Hi, Omitting the sugar will impact your results and your cookie won’t likely turn out. Sorry!
These look amazing Katie! Could you use a mix of olive oil and butter if you wanted a little more of the traditional buttery taste?
Hi Belinda, I like the idea, although I’m not sure it would work or not since changing the oil can impact results. You can always serve with some butter!
This is a wonderful cookie recipe with ingredients one typically has on hand or can easily get from a neighbor’s bush..I mean the Rosemary, ha, ha.. I’ve tried it mostly with regular whole wheat flour instead of white whole wheat flour and it does make a difference. The regular whole wheat flour needs more oil. I’ve made this with lime zest and lime juice to make up for the smaller size of limes and consequent lower yield of zest and they’ve been equally good. I add less than one cup powdered sugar; 1 cup is too sweet. It would be helpful to know how much zest is to be added since lemons vary widely in size. My favorite version actually involves using powdered cardamom in place of lemon and rosemary and regular vegetable oil, not olive oil. This gives you an easy nankhatai version without the effort and butter. Nankhatai is the name of a variety of traditional Indian cookies. Delicious.
I am a huge Cookie and Kate fan! I always tell people that every single recipe I’ve ever tried of yours works out. This is a big win for me since I’m a very mediocre cook! I am not a baker, but I joined the office baking exchange this holiday, I need to make 12 dozen of something! I attempted this recipe last night, and I’m hoping for some guidance. The flavours turned out very well, I used pastry flour since I’ve yet to find white ww in a grocery store in Saskatchewan (Canada). I also put everything into my kitchen aid mixer, and I doubled the recipe and pressed it into a 9×13.
The consistency came out too firm! They aren’t airy like the rolled shortbread I’m used to from my grandma ( I think it’s an Irish recipe, she used cookie cutters and they area TREAT!) I wonder if it’s a mixer problem? Are these better mixed by hand? Could I have pressed them into the pan too firmly? I’m not sure if it’s possible to pack it in too tightly, I tried to be gentle with that step. The olive oil was a first for me, but it made this recipe so easy and quick! My favourite kind of baking :)
Tips on what the consistency/texture is meant to be like with the finished product would be appreciated!
Thanks for bringing us into your kitchen <3
Anna
Hi Anna, I’m sorry to hear that! How did you measure the flour? It wounds like too much flour was used or may have been over mixed.
These are delicious! I’ve made them lots of times, often with the reduced powedered sugar amount. They are still rich and sweet! The texture is lovely, holds together just enough to cut and hold but “melts” in your mouth. I always use the brand of olive oil that is mentioned, though sometimes just use AP flour and they still turn out well.
These are addictive!
I’m glad you loved it, Christine!
I have made these shortbread cookies 2x and they just may be my favorite!!!! I added more rosemary than the recipe suggested as I could not taste the rosemary at all. Thank you for such a delicious shortbread treat.
Great to hear, Cori!
These are delicious! I looove butter shortbread but since learning I’m lactose intolerant I’m trying to bake more with olive oil, which I also love. I had this recipe in mind and finally had fresh rosemary on hand. I pretty much always find cookie recipes too sweet so I made the version with 3/4 cup powdered sugar and the texture and sweetness are great! (Thank you for the less-sweet alternative!) The raw dough was wetter than it is when I have made shortbread with butter, but that was no issue – the finished cookies are wonderful and not greasy at all. I might add a bit more lemon zest next time but that’s just me and I’m guessing these are very adaptable to diff herbs and spices.
I’m delighted you are enjoying this one, Jess! I appreciate you taking the time to review.
Do you think you could make these with gluten free flour?
I haven’t tried it so I can’t say for sure, sorry!
We cut it down to 1/2 c of sugar and these were fantastic!
Definitely a make-again in our family!
Love your book,website, and recipes. Condolences on the loss of Cookie.Anxious to make your shortbread recipe…..thank you!
Can these cookies be made in advance and the dough frozen?
I don’t think the dough can be frozen, but you can try freezing the baked good.
I could not find the California Olive Ranch “Everyday” olive oil so used California Olive Ranch “Global” instead. They were very olive oil tasting – I did not like that. The lemon and rosemary flavorings got lost in the olive oil flavor.
I had a hunch these would be yummy, even though I had never had rosemary and olive oil in a dessert. I really like this recipe. I am going to try them again with 1 cup of sugar next time, because I prefer a less sweet shortbread. I really like how there is no dairy in them too! I really like your recipes. Thank you for providing them!
Delicious…Can’t stop eating these ♥️
That’s great to hear, Ruth!
Made this twice in one week! So good and so easy. Love all your recipes. I checked out your book from the library right before the pandemic and lucky me got to keep it for a looooong time.
I have just made this and theycame out wonderfully.
I went a little off piste by replacing half a cup of flour with rice flour which gave that classic Scottish shortbread crunch, it seemed to work really well.
My mother in law eats dairy free, I’m looking forward to making this for her
Thank you Kate I love your inspired recipes .