Shortbread

I love shortbread! People always say how hard it is to make so for a long time I was too nervous to try it, but I'm so glad I finally did because it's not only delicious, but also incredibly easy. Even if you are not a baker you could definitely make this as a lovely festive treat.

I started with Jamie Oliver's Best Ever Shortbread recipe (from Cook With Jamie) but have made some changes.

Ingredients
250g softened butter
125g caster sugar
250g plain flour
125g cornflour or semolina (I prefer to use rice flour)

That's it!

Method

Prep: put your butter on the counter ahead of time so it will soften. Make sure you have rice flour or similar. Preheat your oven to 150 degrees. Find a square tin and line it with baking paper. (You can, if you prefer, use a round tin instead of square. You can not, despite what Jamie says, grease your tin instead of using paper. If you do you'll be sorry.)


Step 1: put the butter (chopped up a bit) and the sugar into a bowl.

Step 2: cream it in your pink Kitchenaid. If your mean boyfriend hasn't bought you one yet, borrow your Mum's or just use a wooden spoon. You will know it is creamed when it looks like this:

Step 3: add the flour and rice flour or similar. If you don't want to weigh out all your ingredients separately, just put your mixing bowl on a digital scale, set it at zero then add each ingredient straight into it so you are weighing them all in the bowl. Be careful though!

Step 4: mix it all up. You can't do this in your kitchenaid! It will go everywhere! Use a wooden spoon instead.

At first it will seem like it can't possibly work.

But soon you will have a lovely dough! Roll it into a neat ball.


Step 5: this is where Jamie and I really disagree. He thinks you should roll your dough out into a square then put that in your tin. I have no idea how you could do this and everyone I know seems to struggle most with this step of the shortbread process. Not me, because I have a secret: just chuck your ball of dough into the tin, then squash it about until it fits the square and is roughly level. Easy peasy!

See?


Step 6: prick your dough all over with a fork. Don't forget this step!!!


Step 7: put it in the oven for about 50 minutes.  The good thing about biscuits is that it is pretty hard to get the cooking time wrong - too little and they're extra soft and moist, too long and they're extra crunchy and perhaps a little too golden.  Either way they're still edible so don't worry too much.


Step 8: Once the time is up, sprinkle some extra caster sugar over it all and leave the tray to cool.  After it's cooled, lift out the whole thing by the edges of the paper and cut it into pieces.  Jamie recommends twelve gigantic chunks but I do about twice that.  You can always have a second (or third or fourth or tenth) piece.