Ina Garten's shortbread is very good. You can jazz it up with some lemon zest (my favorite), chopped dried fruit (cranberries are good), nuts or dipped in chocolate as above in Ina's recipe from rob333. I tend to use her recipe more for tart crusts since it's a bit more stable than my own shortbread cookie recipe. This is the shortbread recipe I've used for cookies forever. I've done lots of testing, and shortbread just tastes better with salted butter IMO (my apologies to the baking police). You can roll these out thinner if you like. I prefer them a little thicker. I always use a small, star-shaped cookie cutter for these at Christmas. Just like Ina's, you can jazz these up. I often double the recipe. Shortbread Cookies Note: The flour/cornstarch can be replaced with 2 cups of cake flour. Sprinkling the cookies with sugar is optional. 2 cups flour 2 T. cornstarch Pinch salt 1/2 cup plus 2 T. powdered sugar 2 sticks salted butter, room temperature 1/2 tsp. vanilla First, remove 2 T. from the 2 cups of flour and replace with the 2 T. cornstarch. Mix salt with flour/cornstarch. Cream butter, sugar and vanilla. Add dry ingredients and mix until just blended. Form into ball and wrap in plastic. Chill for about 30 minutes to an hour. Preheat oven to 325. Roll dough out on lightly floured surface to about 3/8- to 1/2-inch thickness. Cut out shapes with about 1 1/2-inch cookie cutter. Place on parchment lined cookie sheet and bake about 20 to 25 minutes. Watch carefully, you want them to just barely get color (depending on your oven, you may need a little less or more time). Remove from oven, sprinkle with fine or granulated sugar, let sit for about 10 minutes, and remove to rack to cool.

Here is the recipe I have used successfully for years. It is simple and versatile (Martha's original recipe suggests adding to each third, such as shaved chocolate, candied orange peel, ginger, etc.) Shortbread from Martha Stewart 1997 1 pound unsalted butter 1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed 1 tsp salt 5 cups all-purpose flour Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Prepare three 8" cake pans by lining bottom with parchment paper. Cream together butter and brown sugar; beat two minutes at high speed. Add salt and flour, mixing after each cup added. When dough is well mixed and holds together, remove from mixing bowl and divide into thirds. Place each third of dough mixture into an 8" cake pan lines with parchment paper. With dull edge of table knife, score cookie into quarters (do not cut deep into dough), then score each quarter into three wedges. Prick design in with fork or wooden skewer. Bake in preheated oven at 275 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes, until just slightly colored around the edges. Remove from oven and cool slightly. Separate cookie from pan by carefully running a table knife around edge. Place plate or cooling rack over pan and carefully turn over to remove cookie from pan, then turn cookie right side up to finish cooling. Cool completely before storing. Wrap well in plastic wrap or cellophane or store in tin. Best if stored at least one week before serving, flavor continues to improve over two or three weeks. Note: Shortbread freezes well.

Everyone has their own way. I learned to bake shortbread from my Scottish Grandmother and my Scottish Mom. They always chilled their dough so I follow in their tradition. I only chill the dough for shortbread, dough that has to be rolled and when I make pie crust. I make the melting moments or whipped shortbread recipe using cornstarch, icing sugar, flour and butter when I want something really soft but I prefer the crispier shortbread using rice flour and fine sugar. Either recipe, buttery shortbread sure does taste good. I watched an episode of Cooks Country or America's Test Kitchen and they used ground up rice krispies to make their shortbread crispier. I might try that if I ever run out of rice flour. I always have rice krispies on hand to make rice krispy squares

Thanks, everybody! Even Dave--the grits idea was relevant, but although cornstarch is often called corn flour, it's not just ground up corn. It's boiled and separated and washed to get the starch out. Yes, it's powder tapioca starch. I also have tapioca pearls, but that's different. You have to soak pearls to reduce them back to starch, but then it's too wet to use as starch. I checked two stores for cornstarch and neither had a box. One had one small tin. The other had four slightly larger, but definitely gravy thickening size (I use Wondra for that). I will get a gravy sized Clabber Girl non-gmo tin (plastic?) for things like cookies. I don't really need a whole box right now--just usually have one. If this happens again, I'll go for the arrowroot. The dearth got me to decide that substituting on a recipe I haven't made before is just silly. So I made up a cookie to use what I'd already measured out. It's pretty good. I'll start another thread.