Orange Marmalade & Chocolate Shortbread
It’s been an excrutiating week for me. I’m still waiting on my camera to arrive! For those who don’t know, I recently won my first digital SLR camera thanks to the help of the readers of my blog! Read more
Posts tagged ‘shortbread’
Feb 25
3 Comments
Sep 3
Salted Chocolate Shortbread
It was the weekend. My mom and I were out at the mall, spending money here and there on things we didn’t necessarily need. We were tired from walking from shop to shop and carrying our shopping bags, and we were hungry. On the way home, we stopped at our then-favorite fast food restaurant, where we ordered our usual. Cheeseburgers, fries, and a Frosty – I’m sure our arteries were screaming in horror each time we stopped at this place!
Our conversations covered many topics as we calmed our hungry bellies, but there was always one topic that came up every time – my mom’s lifelong habit of dipping her French fries into her Frosty/milkshake/ice cream and then eating them. I found it appalling, yet somewhere deep inside, secretly, I knew exactly what she meant. I liked to drink a big swig of my milkshake after eating a handful of fries. But never, never, would I ever blatantly dip a French fry into my milkshake like that. The very act was offensive, to say the least.
Jun 8
Chocolate Shortbread
Here’s a little scenario. You have a craving for something chocolate. A chocolate cake, or cupcakes, or brownies perhaps. You dig out your favorite chocolate recipe to make sure you have all the ingredients… you realize you’re out of eggs… you don’t have a block of chocolate… your baking powder has expired… oh great, you can’t make anything after all! But wait…
Don’t give up! I have something for you! It’s buttery, it’s tender, it’s chocolatey, it’s chocolate shortbread!
May 18
Sweetness The Patisserie
I love being back in Sydney. There are so many amazing bakeries to explore. I’ve been back in Sydney for almost 6 months but I’ve hardly explored outside of my suburb, mostly because the most amazing bakeries are at least one hour away from me (or at least the ones I know about are!). On a recent trip to the library to borrow a back issue of delicious. magazine (November 2009) I found a photo reference to Sweetness The Patisserie at Epping. I instantly perked up because Epping is not far away from me at all. A few days later, I was standing inside of Sweetness The Patisserie with my 2-year-old son, trying to make a decision on what to buy from this beautiful shop.
The shop is indeed beautiful. I wasn’t brave enough to ask if I could take a photo inside the shop, so all you get is this sideways shot of the outside! The inside of the shop is loaded with sweet treats of all kinds, including macarons, marshmallows, fudge, toffee, truffles, or, easier yet, let’s just say that if it’s sweet, it’s in this shop!
Shortbread Cookies
I thought it was a huge coincidence that the very day I had planned on making shortbread cookies, Cakespy posted a Salute To Shortbread! My mom’s birthday is early next week and she likes shortbread. I thought it’d be a nice treat for her to have some homemade shortbread cookies, so I chose the Classic Shortbread recipe from Martha Stewart’s COOKIES book.
I didn’t have a 10″ fluted tart pan, or any 10″ pan whatsoever, so I did something a little different; I lightly pressed the dough into the bottoms of my mini bundt cake pan. The pan has 12 mini bundt cake molds in it.
They turned out pretty cute! They’re very delicate and very buttery. With the first batch to go in the bundt pan, I forgot to refrigerate the dough. When I tasted a cookie from that batch after I took them out of the oven, I didn’t like it one bit. I was quite disappointed, but the rest of the batches I kept the dough refrigerated. Oddly enough, I liked the cookies with the refrigerated dough. I don’t know what the refrigeration changed about the taste of the cookie, but I’d just like to remind everyone, don’t forget to refrigerate the dough!
Classic Shortbread
View printable PDF recipe
Adapted from Martha Stewart’s COOKIES book
makes 8 wedges2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons coarse salt
2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature, plus more for the pan
3/4 cup confectioners’ sugarPreheat oven to 300 degrees, with rack in upper third of oven. Sift flour and salt into a bowl; set aside. Put butter into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium-high speed until light and fluffy – 3 to 5 minutes. Gradually add sugar; beat until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes.
Reduce speed to low. Add flour to mixture all at once; mix until just combined.
Butter a 10 inch round springform pan or cake pan. Using plastic wrap, press dough evenly into pan. With plastic on dough, refrigerate 20 minutes.
Cut dough into 8 wedges with a paring knife. Using a wooden skewer, prick all over at 1/4 inch intervals.
Bake until golden brown and firm in center, about 1 hour. Transfer pan to a wire rack. Re-cut shortbread into wedges; let cool completely in pan.
