Delicious elevenses + a recipe for perfect shortbread

You may have spotted yesterday that I had an overwheming urge to bake. One of those said items was shortbread, which turned out perfectly – light, buttery and crumby, but holds together beautifully well. All this and very simple to make. Look at how amazingly restrained I was this morning…

Shortbread
from Tana Ramsay’s ‘Family Kitchen’ available here (I only tweaked recipe very very slightly – I didn’t bother seiving anything and found I needed a tiny bit of water to get things going. You’ll see).

INGREDIENTS

• 100g plain flour
• 50g cornflour
• 50g caster sugar
• 100g cold butter

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 160ºC/310ºF/gas 2½. Grease and line a 20cm cake tin
2. Add the flour, cornflour and sugar in the bowl of the electric mixer, chop the butter into small cubes and add that.
3. Turn the motor onto lowest setting and watch as mixture gradually becomes crumbly and then begins to come together in heavy lumps. At this point turn the motor off and tip the cumbly lumpy mixture into greased cake tin.
4. Push the shortbread down firmly with back of dessert spoon. Flatten as much as possible and prick all over with a fork.
5. Bake for 25minutes until cooked but not brown.
6. As soon as it’s out of the oven but still in the tin, but into slices and sprinkle lightly with caster sugar. Leave in tin until cooled.

Will keep for 2-3 days in air-tight container and also freezes well. Apparently.

*Mine wouldn’t get lumpy so I added cold water a teaspoon at a time until it did.