Holly's Pinny

Recipes from a British baking enthusiast and food-obsessive

Buttery, sweet, sandy shortbread slabs

There are few things as satisfying as conjuring up a plateful of homemade biscuits. They instantly make an impressive dessert when served alongside shop-bought ice cream, take a chocolate mousse to another level and, of course, are always welcome with a cup of tea or coffee.

Shortbread is a big favourite of mine but I had never managed to make any worthy of the name, until this week.

I had tried various ‘butter’ biscuit recipes but been underwhelmed by the results. I tried variations on Jamie Oliver’s 5 Ingredients shortbread including one with coffee and one with chocolate chips and although nice biscuits they didn’t meet the standard of shortbread. Here’s a link to the recipe in case you fancy a read.

Shortbread slabs on baking tray

A little digging around led me to Felicity Cloake’s cook the perfect shortbread article and on the second attempt, and with a little tweaking, I hit upon exactly the sort of biscuit I was dreaming of. 

I didn’t have rice flour so I used fine semolina, which did make for a lovely crumbly texture, and I used the best salted butter I could find (Echiré demi-sel)

The technique seems to be as important as the quantities of ingredients but it isn’t difficult. The butter should be soft to start with and creamed with the butter just as you would for a sponge cake (rather than rubbed in). 

Conventional wisdom holds that you shouldn’t ‘work’ the dough too much or the shortbread will lose it’s crumbly texture. However, I found I needed to knead a little to bring it all into a ball and even the bits I clumped together after I’d cut out the first shapes and re-rolled, still made gorgeous shortbread.

2 shortbread biscuits next to tea cup

Makes 12-14 biscuits

Ingredients

  • 115g salted butter, soft
  • 55g golden caster sugar
  • 130g plain flour
  • 30g fine semolina 
  • Granulated sugar to sprinkle

Method

Turn your oven on to 150°C and line a baking tray with baking paper or a reusable baking tray liner.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a freestanding mixer.

Add the flour and semolina and mix in with a spoon.

Tip the mixture out onto a lightly floured surface and bring together. Work it a little until you have a smooth dough.

Flatten into a disc with your hands, then use a floured rolling pin to roll it out to a thickness of about 1-1.5 cm.

Cut out rectangles, then prick them with a fork all over.

Finally, use a spatula to slide the shortbread slabs onto a lined baking tray, spaced apart (bear in mind that they will spread a little during baking) and put in the fridge for 15 minutes to firm up.

Bake them for 30-40 mins, until very light gold at the edges. (If you’ve made a double batch and have more than one baking tray, bake one at a time)

Sprinkle with granulated sugar whilst still hot and leave to cool.

Store in an airtight container. They keep for a week or so.

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