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Traditional shortbread with rice flour |
I have no idea how my desperate desire to bake something
festive somehow translated into traditional shortbread - look, it’s even round
like they do in Scotland! Having said that, I have no idea if this is even
constituted as Scottish shortbread, anyone?
For days now I’ve just craved
biscuits and fresh, raw raspberries, but I can't bake those so they don't get a blog post. All I wanted was two things from these biccys: that they were home baked and
that they included those festive Christmas spices. Y’know, nutmeg, ginger,
cloves, and a bitta cinnamon?
I knew I couldn’t bake the bog standard non temperamental gingerbread man recipe, this is a
blog for grown-ups after all, so then the search began... the search for a
biscuit which contained those beautifully tasting and oh so aromatic spices, but
that wasn’t specifically a traditional a gingerbread man recipe. It was a disaster. There is NO SUCH THING. I came
across this one recipe; it was from a shabby website which clearly hadn't been
updated since the 17th century so god knows why I put my trust in it
and went ahead, 3 eggs I used!
I was originally after a Christmas spiced
shortbread, the biscuits (if you can call them that) were not at all ‘short’
and certainly weren’t spicy enough! They were these crunchy, tough and
downright ugly plaques of sugar in my eyes - see if you can spot them down
below (I call it the name and shame)…
So that’s when the shortbread was born,
at 2 in the morning, after a frustratingly painful bake off it was time to just
adapt from a real recipe from a real website and viola… short, delicate and
just the right yield. Hey ho (ho-ho), maybe my next post will cease from such
arrogance and be filled with some spicy real gingerbread men!
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Traditional Shortbread |
The Recipe: (all of the 'good quality' variation)
115g unsalted butter at room temperature
40g rice flour
130g plain flour
55g caster sugar plus extra for dusting
Pinch of salt (optional)
Note: Rice flour can be found in most continental aisles in the supermarket. Or, if there is no such thing in your area, you can substitute it for 40g of cornflour. It does the same job, only, giving a more delicate as opposed to 'grainy' mouth feel.
The Method:
Preheat the oven to 150C.
In a large bowl lightly cream the butter and the sugar till fairly smooth, with a wooden or plastic spatula.
Add both of the flour at once, along with the optional pinch of salt.
With a clean hand, start moulding the dough together using a groping/squeezing motion, until all of the ingredients are barely strung together.
Grease an 8 inch sandwich tin with butter.
Put the dough in the tin and press neatly into the corner, remembering to use a light hand.
Decorate accordingly, using a fork to poke holes into the dough to allow air to escape. Score portions into your petticoat if you wish.
Dust with caster sugar/sprinkle it all over and bake for 50 minutes.
Leave to cool completely in the tin, the shortbread should come out of the tin very easily after its cooled!
Have you been doing any festive baking? Tell me about it, lets share our disasters :) Love Em xx