Desserts · By Jocelyn

Shortbread, Grandma Marty's - now Joc's

Grandma's amazing shortbread languished as a family recipe for years after she died until I missed it so much that the recipe had to be found. Dad had never taken down Grandma's recipe, since she always made enough for the whole extended family. So in 2023 I contacted Auntie Jayne, who found the recipe in Grandma's wonderfully messy archival cookbook, with recipes going back to her teen years in the 1940s. First, some backstory on what made "Grandma's shortbread" so distinctive, melting in your mouth. The story begins back in the 1950s when Grandma and Grandpa were living in central Alberta, in Innisfail. Grandpa had been given a teaching job there, and in later years often said how much they loved this beautiful town. The town was named after a Scottish island, and there were many Scots living in the area. The daughter of a local Scottish farmer, Chrissy MacIndoe, became a good friend of Grandma's, and when Grandma tasted Chrissy's mother's shortbread she had to have the recipe. It was a recipe that was butter-rich, and used rice flour as well as wheat flour, giving it a melt-in-your-mouth texture and rich flavor. This rice flour idea apparently went back to the 19th century colonial days, when the British Isles had all kinds of imports from their colonies — Dad told me he had seen a number of older Scottish and British recipes with rice flour as an ingredient. Grandma often commented about how careful her own mother was with cooking and baking, how interested she was in better recipes, in understanding how to prepare better food. Grandma herself was the same way, constantly attentive to new recipes. She was a rare cook back in the 1950s and 60s, so I've heard, cooking a number of different ethnic dishes, like Indian curries, Chinese dishes (chop suey, Chinese tea eggs, pineapple chicken), and French fondues. Grandma's shortbread recipe, unearthed by Auntie Jayne, didn't have the proportions for the amount of rice flour, and so I had to experiment. Dad was the first to get a holiday gift-box of these cookies in 2024, and he proclaimed them "exactly like Grandma's!" Thankfully he agreed to share with the rest of the family.