I love shortbread, love, love, love it and it's simple to make and quick to bake - perfect for Wintery late night bake sessions.
What I Used:
125g/4oz Unsalted Butter180g/6oz Plain Flour
55g/2oz Caster Sugar
[This made around 50 small biscuits and 6 standard size biscuits]
Shortbread, for me, is fairly safe. There are only three ingredients, all you have to do is mix them together [without any special machinery, other than hands] and then roll to cut and bake. They can be on a plate and in your belly within 30 minutes. That to me, is just about as good as it can get.
I found these mini cookie cutters in TKMaxx - about £3 for a box of 9. Bargain [and cute].
Put all your ingredients into a large mixing bowl and with a spoon / hands / or a paddle mixer,
begin to combine. Once the ingredients have mixed, they will resemble large breadcrumbs:
This is where I begin to flatten the mixture at the bottom of the bowl to keep it all together and then
start working the mixture into a ball in my hands [the heat from your hands will help it all combine]:
I rolled out my dough on a flat, cool surface to around 0.5cm thickness and then cut my shapes:
Around 50 small biscuits were cut in total
A Christmas idea, if you are making biscuits over the next few weeks, is to take a straw and use
it to cut small holes in the tops of your biscuits [not too close to the edges, so that it wont break
the dough], then when the biscuits have baked, you can thread the tops with ribbon to either
hang on the tree or give away as gifts:
When ready, lay your biscuits on a lined baking tray [leave enough room between the biscuits for a bit of give and expansion during the bake] and pop in the oven at 190 for 10 minutes. These little biscuits only needed this short amount of time, but if you are baking more standard size biscuits, they will need a little longer, around 20/25 minutes. Keep an eye on them and remove them when the edges have started to brown [as they will continue to cook once removed from the oven]:
...and transfer on to a wire rack to cool.
I'm going to ice my biscuits, however; if you want to leave the shortbread as it is, you could sprinkle a little sugar on top before it cools to decorate:
Next, do this [the biscuits will need a good 15-20minutes to completely cool]:
....until the fun can begin [I bought my writing pens from Asda]:
As the biscuits are small, I didn't completely cover in icing, just outlines and details:
In total, I spent a good 30 minutes decorating [slightly distracted by The Apprentice] and found
baking a few test biscuits, or using broken ones that didn't make the final cut perfect for practising
my steady hand with the writing icing pens - but they were really easy to use and after a while, I
felt I had the hang of it [holly, gingerbread, snowmen, candy canes and trees]:
Fun to make, better to eat. If you have children who love to bake/decorate, these would be perfect for creating with them. Once set, you could also pop a few in a cellophane bag as small gifts or just do what I do, put on a plate, sit in front of the TV and enjoy! Thank you so, so much for visiting the blog this week - have a wonderful weekend and see you on Monday x
Don't forget, you can follow me on Pintrest:
and Twitter!
No comments
Post a Comment