SHORTBREAD is perfect to accompany strawberries – or coffee, or just to eat. This recipe for brown sugar shortbread comes from Bill’s Basics, by Bill Granger, a very useful book. The end product disappears almost at once in our house.
Shortbread
Ingredients:
250g unsalted butter
120g sugar (soft brown in the original, but golden caster sugar works fine)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
220g plain flour
70g cornflour
60g ground almonds
Brown sugar for dusting
Method:
Beat the butter and sugar with a pinch of sea salt until pale. Add the vanilla extract and beat again. Fold in the flour, cornflour and ground almonds until well combined.
Divide the dough in half. Roll out each half between large sheets of baking paper to make a 20cm circle, about the circumference of a medium-sized bowl.
Put the two dough circles, still between their sheets of paper, on two baking trays and chill for ten minutes (the dough, not you: you have to turn the oven to 160C/gas mark 3).
Take dough from the fridge and remove top piece of baking paper. Pinch the edges and score into wedges.
Sprinkle with brown sugar and bake for 25 to 30 mutes until lightly golden.
Cut into wedges while still warm, then leave to cool completely on a wire rack.
Top tip: This shortbread is very fragile when it comes out of the oven and can easily fall apart: leave on the tray for a while then carefully move on to rack, holding the paper.
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