Easy, Delicious Shortbread Biscuits

EASY, DELICIOUS SHORTBREAD BISCUITS

I adore The Great British Bake Off. I adore everything about it from gawping at the insane baking creations produced, the sheer talent of the contestants, Mary and Paul with their haughty baking prowess, Mel and Sue and their incredibly funny innuendos, the delectable tension that steers the whole show, the idyllic English countryside location... It's just wonderful and I'm not embarrassed to say that Bake Off on a Wednesday night makes my entire week. The excitement I feel just before it starts is unreal. It's just baking after all. But then again on the converse it's just so much more than that. For starters, very occasionally it does inspire me to actually attempt to bake something that the contestants have also baked on the show. Expand my baking horizons, so to say. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not normally off on one making super flat French pin wheel biscuits, Baked Alaska, three tier wedding cakes and biscuits with their very own biscuit box. Rest assured the inspiration and my baking abilities only go so far. However every now and again, I'm inspired to tackle a relatively simple bake seen on the show, and last week, after seeing some contestants expertly craft these gorgeous shortbread boxes, I suddenly realised I loved shortbread but had no idea whatsoever how to make it. Therefore after last week's Bake Off had ended, I set about finding a shortbread recipe and making it for myself.

I've never dared making shortbread before because I thought it would be waaaaay too hard. Kind of how I used to think about soup before I made it for the first time. Plus I normally never strayed from my baking repertoire, which mainly consists of different variations of cake and some zany creations of my own. However Bake Off inspired me to brave and try something new, and with shortbread being a staple of sorts in a British citizen's diet, I thought I owed it to my nation to at least try and attempt shortbread. And I can't stress to you how glad I am that I did give it a whirl, because not only is making shortbread ridiculously easy peasy (you only need three ingredients!), it also tastes divine. I've made two batches in four days and consumed six to eight of my biscuits a day. They're so delicious that I can't stop marvelling at the fact that I made them. I've been forcing them upon my family, who were rather hesitant to try my biscuits initially, and when they finally gave in the comments they gave were so nice and positive. It's definitely given me the confidence to venture on to other new baking territories and have a go at baking some new things that I wouldn't have dared to do before.

Making biscuits in particular is really, really easy and I personally prefer to make a batch of my own to keep throughout the week (that's if I don't eat them all in the space of two days) because with shop bought biscuits I'm always acutely aware of all the gunk that's gone into them. Obviously that doesn't often hold me back from eating them, but it is rather nice and satisfying to eat a delicious homemade biscuit knowing exactly what ingredients are in it, no additives or sneaky extras, and it almost makes the whole biscuit experience more enjoyable in my opinion. So with that, I would love, love, love to share with you my delectable and super easy shortbread recipe, should you want to bake and enjoy the marvel that is shortbread for yourself too!

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INGREDIENTS

2oz sugar
(caster works best although I've used unrefined and dark brown sugar so far!)

4oz butter

6oz plain flour

1 handful of almonds

1 handful of dessicated coconuts

2 teaspoons of vanilla essence

METHOD

1. Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees.

2. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until it creates a smooth paste like consistency.

3. Pour in the flour, coconut, almonds and vanilla essence and stir everything together until it creates a dough.

4. Use your hands to compress everything into a ball, take it out of the bowl and then wrap in clingfilm.

5. Put the shortbread dough ball in the fridge for 20 minutes. Meanwhile grease a baking tray with butter.

6. Remove dough from fridge, take off clingfilm and roll out the dough on a floured surface using a rolling pin or a glass.

7. When it reaches around a 1cm thickness, cut into rectangles, squares, triangles or use a cookie cutter if you want round biscuits. The choice is yours!

8. Depending on the size of your biscuits, you'll get roughly between 18-24 biscuits. Line them all on the baking tray, use a fork to make little holes on the biscuit surface.

 9. Cook for 15 minutes if you like your biscuit to be slightly soft inside and crispier on the outside, or 20 minutes if you like a crunchier biscuit.

10. Remove biscuits from oven and line them on a baking tray to cool for ten minutes. Then enjoy and keep on enjoying those delicious shortbread biscuits until they're all gone (which will be relatively soon after making them).