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A deliciously soft and butter chocolate button shortbread cookie that is super easy to make and even easier to eat

Simple six ingredient chocolate button studded shortbread cookies that are a delicious dupe of the Marks & Spencers viral bake.

Shop bought cookies vs homemade

I will always be on the side of the argument that I think every piece of food, whether homemade or not, has a place and exists for a reason. I adore to make homemade versions of biscuits such as my homemade hobnobs, or my homemade bourbon biscuits for example – but for a number of reasons, I could still easily buy the shop bought versions and that is totally fine.

When I am talking about these delicious chocolate button shortbread cookies, it’s more in comparison to an in-store bakery… and in this particular instance, Marks & Spencers. They are renowned for making utterly epic treats in their in-store bakeries, and I have had endless requests for a homemade version of a number of treats – but particularly these chocolate button shortbreads.

Shortbread biscuits

I have a number of different shortbread variations on my blog, whether it’s in the form of a millionaires shortbread type bake so more of a traybake, or my shortbread heart biscuits. I love shortbread, especially in it’s simplicity. Most of the time, it’s a simple mixture of a butter, a flour, and a sugar and it’s sweet and light but also, delightful.

There are a few different ways to make shortbread, even though it’s quite simple. I tend to use the method of mixing the butter and sugar together first, and then adding in the flour. You can use a stand mixer for something like this, or a bowl and a spoon – it just takes a bit of arm power. You can then knead the mixture together slightly with the warmth of your hands to bring the dough together.

You can also add the butter, cold and cubed up, into a large bowl with the sugar and flour, and break the mixture up together into a breadcrumb like texture, and then knead again into a dough. Or, you can add the ingredients to a food processor, and blitz it until combined (like you can do with a shortcrust pastry). I also add a little vanilla to the dough for extra sweetness, but this is optional.

What flour do I use?!

Because I am purposely trying to replicate a different bake, this recipe is slightly different. When I looked at the ingredients of the M&S chocolate button shortbread, it obviously reads as a lot more ingredients as they have to list everything, but there was the note of rice flour in the ingredients list.

When it comes to shortbread, adding cornflour or rice flour is quite common, and it brings a different element to the bake in a texture way. They are interchangeable, with ever so slight differences, but I tend to use cornflour as it’s what I have readily available in my cupboards. They both have good properties for a thickening agent in recipes as they are a very starchy substance.

If you want to use rice flour, instead of cornflour, it gives a slightly more crunchy texture to the bake, compared to the soft buttery nature of the cornflour being added in. Of course, you don’t have to use either, and you can up the plain flour to 300g – but it won’t be the same as the bakery ones.

Chocolate

Purposely, again, because I am trying to simply recreate a biscuit that you can buy, I used a similar chocolate. I do love to eat chocolate buttons to be fair, especially when they are cold and crunchy out of the fridge (are you a fridge cold chocolate eater, or a cupboard chocolate eater?!) and they work really well in a bake like this.

You can switch the chocolate buttons to supermarket or bakery chocolate chips, or a chocolate bar that you have chopped up – you do not specifically have to use the same thing. However, as you must be able to cut through the chocolate with a cookie cutter/knife, the thinner the bits of chocolate, the better, just for ease.

Baking the biscuits

Once I have made the dough for my bake, I lightly flour the work surface so that none of the dough will stick onto it – this bit is always the worst, when you perfectly make a dough and it’s ruined by glueing itself to your surface and you have to sort it out.

I used a set of metal cookie cutters to make my bake, and I used the 7.5cm cutter specifically to get a similar size to the M&S biscuits. You can make these smaller of course, they just may take slightly less time to bake.

I place them onto a lined tray, and chill the dough for at least 30 minutes in the fridge so that the butter has time to firm up again as well as the biscuits, and preheat my oven at the same time. You sprinkle on an extra little bit of caster sugar before baking in the oven until they are golden and perfect. I then leave them to cool fully on the tray, and devour of course.

Tips & Tricks

I used these metal cookie cutters for my bake
I make 12-13 cookies using the 7.5cm cutter, you can make more or less with different sized and shaped cutters so keep an eye on the biscuits whilst baking
You can use golden caster sugar instead of white caster sugar
You can substitute the cornflour for rice flour
You can use any flavour chocolate button/chip
These will last 5-7 days once baked, or freeze for 3+ months