Easiest-Ever 6-Step Choc-Chunk Christmas Shortbread

This super-easy, super-cheap and super-impressive batch of chocolate shortbread is perfect for a last-minute gift or to bring as a plate for Christmas lunch, and it will trick people into thinking you're more kitchen-competent than you actually are.

Before we start, you'll need...

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125g (heaped 1/2 cup) of butter (not melted)

55g (flat 1/4 cup) caster sugar

180g (1 and 1/3 cups) cup plain flour

Chocolate - any type, any amount. I'll explain the chocolate situation in a minute.

extra spoonful of caster sugar

pinch of salt (optional)

pinch of baking soda/bicarb soda (optional)

Pre-heat your oven to around 180°C.

Get a baking tray ready. Some people are like "ugh, greasing trays with butter and flour, ain't nobody got time for that, can't I use some baking paper?" and some are like "I don't even own baking paper, so..." Look, just do whichever one of these suits you best. If you don't have a baking tray, use any oven tray or line the bottom of a few cake tins. I don't mind. It's okay.

Step 1

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Take your butter and caster sugar and beat them together in a mixing bowl. My $15 electric hand mixer from Target has kind of changed my life in terms of baking, but you can totally do this by hand if you let the butter soften to room temperature.

Do this until the mix is smooth and slightly pale – not too long, or the shortbread will end up too delicate. Try not to just shove all the creamed butter and sugar in your mouth. Not eating that glorious mess is the biggest challenge of this procedure.

Step 2

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Add the 180g of flour. You can sift it in, but let's be real, it's seriously not a necessity. Just stir it a few times with a knife before adding it into the creamery butter and sugar deliciousness.

If you want to add a pinch of salt and pinch of bicarb soda, do that now as well - it will add just a little more for the flavour and texture, but it's no big deal either way.

Now, get your mixer or your spoon and start stirring until your dough mix looks like breadcrumbs.

Step 3

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Now is the time for CHOCOLATE. You can use any chocolate you like, in pretty much any quantity you like. If you would like to add one delicate chocolate drop into the centre of each biscuit, that is okay. If you want to weigh your dough down with 50% chocolate, that is also okay.

I used half a standard bag of milk cooking chocolate buttons, about 130g. You do not have to use cooking chocolate. The only thing to note is this: if you use regular eating chocolate it melts differently, so the biscuits will not set completely hard. They will be more gooey than if you use cooking chocolate. Both options are pretty awesome in different ways. Depends what you feel like. You do you.

Roughly chop your chocolate, and stir it through the dough-crumbs. Once it's mixed in, grab handfuls of the dough and start squooshing it. Just mash it together in your hands for a little while, until it all sticks together and becomes actual dough.

Smush it all back into one big ball with no crumbly bits. This should not take more than a couple of minutes in total – don't knead it too long or it will go too dense.

Step 4

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If you are in a hurry, or lazy, or you have a short attention span, you can choose to ignore this entire step. I promise I won't look at you with disappointment and scathing in my eyes akin to Mary Berry when confronted with a soggy bottom. But it does slightly improve the overall end product, so if you can be bothered: take your dough ball and put it on some cling film.

I shape mine into kind of a log, and then once I wrap it, I roll it out into a stick/sausage/baguette thing. I have no idea why I do this – I think, initially, I had planned to cut the dough sausage into perfect rounds to place on the baking tray before I realised that the massive chocolate chunks made this impossible. Whatever, you can just wrap the dough ball however you like or even put it back in the bowl and cover that in cling film. But I made a stick.

Now put this in the fridge for at least 20 minutes. Go watch this week's New Girl. If you forget about the dough, that's okay. The fridge will not hurt it.

Step 5

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When you feel like getting the dough out of the fridge, or, alternately, directly after smooshing your dough ball together, have your baking trays ready and also get a plate to tip your extra spoonful of caster sugar onto.

Break off chunks of dough – as big or small as you like, I do about a walnut-sized one – and roll each chunk into a ball in your hand. Squash this down onto the caster sugar so you have a semi-flat, round, chunky biscuit with one side coated in sugar. If your dough has a lot of chocolate in it, try to push this into the centre of each ball and make sure the outsides are mainly dough-y.

Put each of these biscuits non-sugar-side down onto the tray. They won't spread much, but give them a little space. When you have used up your entire stick/ball/whatever of dough, put your tray in the oven.

Step 6

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The shortbread should take around 10-15 minutes to bake. The bigger the pieces are, the longer it will be. Keep an eye on them. They don't rise, so opening the oven to check won't ruin them. Shortbread does not really start turning brown. It stays the same shade as the dough, pretty much, So after around 15 minutes, it should have maybe picked up the tiniest bit of colour? Take them out then.

Leave them to cool on the tray. Do not touch them – they will be soft and they need to set while cooling. If you touch them at this stage they will probably fall apart. Abstain, please.

Once they have turned hard, you can serve them, or pack them up, or whatever you are doing with them.

If you try one and you think it's still too soft or doughy, you can bake them a bit more – I suggest putting them back on the tray but upside down, it helps dry out the bases which didn't get exposed to the hot oven air.

That's pretty much it.

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As previously mentioned, these biscuits make great gifts. Shortbread keeps for a really long time - long enough to send through the post, even, especially if you use cooking chocolate. Stick it in a jar or a cool tin, tie a festive bow around it, and voila! A tasty, inexpensive and creative present.

By the way, if you want to make neater looking biscuits or Christmas shapes, you can do this entire recipe without the chocolate. After step 3, just roll out your dough to about 2cm thickness and cut it however you like with a knife or a cutter. The plain butter shortbread is still freaking delicious. You can also use red or green coloured sugar for the dipping process for an even more festive diabetic coma!