Garrgh. I'm useless. Seriously. I have a pile of marking to do and a house to start packing and job applications up the wazoo, but instead I have spent the morning faffing about and achieving nothing! Sigh.
However, procrastination usually results in one of two things for me - either I clean (a much rarer event) or I bake. Today I've gone with the latter option and have made chocolate chunk cookies (returning to the basics seems a good way of rediscovering my kitchen mojo...the cookies are fine, and the raw batter is even better!) and shortbread. Oddly I don't think I've ever made shortbread before, but it's not nearly as challenging as I thought it was. I made a recipe which had cornflour as well as regular flour, because I like crunchy shortbread and that gives it the necessary texture. It was too dry to roll out and cut into pieces, so I pressed it into a cake tin and baked it that way, intending to cut it into wedges (which is quite traditional of Scottish shortbread, so I've read). Apparently you're meant to score it or something prior to baking because my shortbread 'cake' is now a pile of broken chunks of shortbread, but those chunks are damn tasty, perfectly crumby with just the right amount of crunch. Perfection with a cup of hot, sweet Earl Grey Tea while pissing away an afternoon.
Shortbread Recipe
Ingredients (please don't ask me to convert these to metric. My scales measure both):
6oz Plain flour
4oz Soft butter
2oz caster sugar
1 oz cornflour
Cream butter and sugar until pale and creamy. Add sifted flours and mix to combine. Hopefully yours will be moist enough to hold together and get rolled out. Otherwise press into a lightly oiled cake tin and bake at 170degC for 25 mins or until very lightly coloured all over.
It will be soft until it cools properly and then it will go nice and crisp.
Happy procrastinating to one and all!
No comments:
Post a Comment