Today I wanted to share a recipe that is perfect to enjoy with a hot drink and a good book. The classic, simple shortbread is a sugary treat that will keep you full and energised for a long reading session. A lot of the ingredients for this you can find in your kitchen cupboards, so you can whip these biscuits together really easily. This recipe is from the BBC Good Food website and you can find other amazing recipes there. Enjoy!
Ingredients:
325g Plain Flour
200g Chilled Salted Butter
125g Caster Sugar
2tsp Vanilla Extract
2 Egg Yolks
Icing Sugar (To Dust)
Method:
1) Tip all of the flour into a bowl. Add the butter, but do this using very small pieces of butter at a time. Using your finger tips, form the mixture into breadcrumbs. You don't want to overwork the mixture, but all the butter and flour needs to be combined. If you have a food processor, you can pop the ingredients in here and whizz it together. However, you still need to add the butter slowly and in small sections.
2) Add the sugar, vanilla and egg yolks to the mixture and combine together until it resembles a smooth dough.
3) Lightly flour the kitchen side. With your hands, roll the dough into a sausage shape. This needs to have a 5cm diameter and be around 29cm long. However, it is more important that you get the diameter as near to correct as possible, so don't worry if the sausage isn't as long as recommended.
4) Wrap the roll in cling film and chill the dough for 1 hour.
5) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Lightly grease two baking trays.
6) Using a sharp knife, cut the dough into slices around 5mm thick. These are quite generous sized biscuits. Ideal for a reading snack! Or roll the dough to a decent thickness and use cutters to create your own shapes. Arrange the biscuit shapes onto a tray, making sure to space them out so they have room to cook.
7) Bake the biscuits for 20 minutes, until they are turning pale golden on the edges. Transfer the biscuits to a wire rack to cool down. Biscuits may still feel a bit soft when you remove them from the oven, but they harden up as they cool.
8) Once the biscuits are cool, lightly dust them with some icing sugar.
These biscuits will remain fresh for one week if they are stored in an air tight tin. If you'd like to be extra decadent, instead of dusting with sugar you could drizzle on some chocolate. If you want to make the dough ahead of time, it can be stored for six weeks in the freezer. However, before you cook it, it needs 1 hour to thaw and reach room temperature.
Let me know if you end up making this recipe! What book will you read whilst snacking on your shortbread biscuits?
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