When Alex was posting photos of her Halloween cookies on her Instagram account, she wondered whether to call them matcha shortbread butter cookies or just matcha shortbread cookies.
She asked me and I said “matcha shortbread butter cookies” sweeps more keywords. And that led into a discussion about what differentiates shortbread cookies (a mixture of flour, butter and sugar) from what are sold as “butter cookies”.
Eggs, I said. Butter cookies have eggs; shortbread cookies don’t but they are butter cookies nonetheless.
She read up on the topic and came across the best differentiation:
All shortbread cookies are butter cookies, but not all butter cookies are shortbread cookies.
Tawilis, Taal and a book by Thomas Hargrove