I'm still feeling that I have a bit of Christmas about the house and kitchen, so I am using up
some of the leftovers in the only way I know how, sweets. Let's bake.
Shortbread, for me, is something I can eat a whole packet of and not feel ill in any way. I'm not sure that's normal, but anything that can be made, baked and ready to eat within the hour is perfect to me.
What I Used [makes 10 generous-sized biscuits]
3oz Plain Flour
2oz Unsalted Butter [room temperature]
1oz Caster Sugar
2oz White Chocolate
1oz Dried Cranberries
Shortbread is a simple 3-ingredient bake.
I started combining my flour, butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until I achieved flakes and a consistency similar to pastry, with all ingredients fully mixed:
...before starting to pack together the mixture into a dough ball. If, at this point, the mixture feels dry, you can add a littler more butter. However, it is important to ensure you have fully combined the dough before adding any extra butter & add no more than 5g at a time, fully incorporating before adding anymore:
I then added my cranberries and white chocolate, around 1/2 an oz at a time, folding it in to the dough and adding more of each as I wanted [for me, this is a higher portion of chocolate ;) ]:
Roll the dough out to a thickness of around 1cm - the consistency of the thickness doesn't matter too much, the cranberries and chocolate may make this difficult, but try to roll out at around 1cm:
Cut your biscuits with a cutter at around 2 inches [my cutter was 2 1/4 inches and cut 9 biscuits]:
...and transfer to a baking tray.
Keep your biscuits around 3cm apart as they will spread a little during the bake.
Pop in a preheated oven at 190 degrees C. My biscuits took 15 minutes to bake, turning the tray around half way through. After 10 minutes, check on them in short intervals to keep a closer watch. Once the biscuit edges have started to brown, take them out of the oven, off the tray and leave them to cool on a wire rack or board for at least 10 minutes.
Once completely cool, the biscuits will have hardened and are more than ready to eat:
Perfect for movie days in during rainy, windy January. Enjoy!
see you next time x
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Three ingredients make shortbread simple and easy to bake: flour, butter and sugar. This process can be soothing as it also helps in getting the right flaky texture and making dough ball. The balance of the mixture is ensured by butter which is adjusted with care if necessary.
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