Lemon shortbread

I have been working with a recipe over the past weeks for the new book I'm writing. While its origin is Mexican, the biscuit it produces is so familiar to so many people from other cultures, I feel like I've stumbled on a universal biscuit base that could be converted to suit many purposes. Flush with a full stock of lemons, thanks to Janet at work, today I thought I would turn my recipe into Lemon Shortbread - a very easy variation on the original recipe and certainly, a very delicious one. I hope you agree!


Ingredients
250g salt reduced butter
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp water
1 tblsp lemon zest
1/2 cup flaked almonds
1/2 cup ground almonds
2 cups plain flour

1. Combine the butter, sugar, lemon juice, water and lemon zest in the bowl of your Kitchenaid (I'm not going to pretend anybody owns any other mixer, okay?). Beat on sixth gear until the butter is pale and creamy.
2. Add the almonds and plain and mix on first gear until the ingredients are just combined.
3. Gather the dough together with your hands and knead it just a little to ensure all the dry ingredients are combined.
4. Place it on a pastry mat or a piece of baking paper and gently roll the entire amount of dough into a log. Keep rolling until the log is about 30cm long and about 6cm in diameter. Wrap it tightly in cling film and roll just a little more to refine the shape of your log. Tap each end on the bench to flatten it so you have a perfect cylindar. Store the shortbread log in the fridge for an hour.
5. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius. Line two baking trays with baking paper.
6. Take the shortbread log out of the fridge and remove the plastic. Using a very sharp knife, cut 1cm thick slices from the log. You are aiming to get at least 24 slices from the log, so be careful how thick you cut each slice.
7. Arrange the shortbread rounds on the baking trays - you should get 12 per tray but make sure you get them enough space in between because they do spread a little. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the shortbread is golden brown. Allow to cool on the tray for five minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
8. You can dust these shortbreads with icing sugar if you like. I think they are nice plain. They will keep for at least four days, if you don't eat them all first!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Marshmallow Sherbet Cones

Image
I have always been a big fan of sherbet in the many forms it comes in. As a kid, I loved those sherbet cones you bought from the corner store – semi solidified sherbet in a stale cone, with chewy marshmallow on the top, coated in hundreds and thousands. I also loved Wiz Fizz – fruity sherbet in a glassine bag with a little plastic shovel. I’d most often buy these on the way home from the pool, because they were only five cents. Unfortunately, my hands were usually still wet from the pool, turning the bag to a sloppy mess before I could eat its entire contents. For my 10th birthday my mum decided to include homemade sherbet cones on the menu. Thanks to The Australian Women’s Weekly recipe cards, we had the recipe for sherbet and marshmallow, albeit, on different cards. My clever mum bought flat bottomed square cones, half filled them with sherbet and then topped them with pink or green marshmallow. Of course each had a liberal sprinkling of hundreds and thousands. In my explo
Read more

White Chocolate Ganache

Image
I don’t think there is an occasion more joyous than a wedding. Of course, once a wedding has taken place, many more joys follow, like the arrival of a long awaited baby. But it all starts with a wedding, and I find weddings to be chock-filled with hope. If you’re lucky, you only ever need to have one wedding – although some people have more than one, if not several! So the trick to getting your fill of wedding joy is to know lots of people who are planning on getting married. As a cake baker, I am getting to participate in weddings, baby showers, naming days and even funerals (although not too many of those, thank goodness)! I consider it a privilege to be invited to create cakes and cupcakes for these landmark occasions in people’s lives. We (my darling husband and I) always try extra hard to come up with something special that fits the occasion and the people who we’re baking for. And what we’ve discovered is trying extra hard allows us an opportunity for continuous improvement. When
Read more

Road Test: Sunbeam Mixmaster v Kenwood Patissier

Image
Back in 2003 when I began my most recent baking odyssey, I acquired a Sunbeam Mixmaster – the remake of the classic retro mixer from the fifties. My mother had a Mixmaster which she bought in the seventies, and which I did most of my cake baking with as a teenager (when the obsession truly took hold). She still has that Mixmaster today, although it is significantly worse for wear – the plastic cover over the light is broken and they haven’t made the bulbs for years, so there’s a “live” cavity where the light bulb should be. I can vouch for that because I stuck my finger in there accidentally last year and got a nice shock from it. I paid quite a lot of money for my Mixmaster and it held pride of place on my kitchen bench for three years. That is until I had it running one Sunday and one of the motors blew up! I discovered that the twin motor “600 watt” power it claimed worked in two ways: 1. to run the beaters; 2. to turn the turntable the bowl sits on. After seeing flames shooting fro
Read more