The fat on shortbread

I’m not sure what comes first, the intention to bake treats or to catch up with friends. Either way the outcome is good, I get to bake and catch up with friends! I’ve now made shortbread twice, both times when we’ve had people round to catch up over a cuppa and baked treats. The English perfected this notion with the invention of High Tea which I’m a huge subsctiber of. In fact I’m such a huge fan of High Tea, I held three last year two for my birthday and one just for the girly fun of it! And to top it off this year we even had a High Tea Wedding and I had a High Tea Hens do. And I secretly think Neil could have quite happily had a High Tea Bucks do too! So I think the next six months are going to involve a lot of tea and baked treats. Hmm just as well I’ve got a gym membership, a boxing and cycling buddy and a commitment to ride to work once a week otherwise I’m going to turn into one big butterball! So friends keep an eye on me and if I get any fatter invite yourselves around to help lighten the load and sure I’m riding my bike and going to the gym!


Anyway, onto the fat on shortbread! This is probably one of the easier recipes to convert to gluten free, as it’s essentially butter, sugar and flour and it doesn’t need to rise. Although it can be a bit crumbly if you don’t get the ratio quite right. And not having made shortbread in the normal way I don’t have much to compare with. Never the less, I didn’t let that put me off, I ploughed on with a couple hours to spare before friends arrived to test a muffin and shortbread recipes and trusted favorite for normal double chocolate chip cookies. The second time round I tried it again this time with the melting moments and another muffin. Luckily I’ve got forgiving friends that don’t mind eating less than perfect first and second attempts.

Well each time friends arrived and I managed to present up the Lemon and Cranberry Shortbread (The Gluten-free Cookbook, The Australian Women’s Weekly), a version of Carrot, Orange Sultana Muffins (same book or and adapted version of Stephanie Alexander's muffin recipe) and another tried tested biscuit. I’m still trying to master a muffin recipe so I write about that another time when I get it right.

The shortbread recipe is for Orange Shortbread but it included a variation for Lemon and Cranberry which I chose to do so I didn’t double up on orange flavours with the muffins. I also halved the recipe as I didn’t have enough butter for both biscuit recipes. Handily the recipe is for two 20cm rounds. I didn’t bother with pre-marking the wedges before baking and I found cutting the easyist when fully chilled otherwise it broke and crumbled. But hey that might be my inperfections with the butter to flour ratio meaning that my verision was more crumbly. Anyway I still think the recipe is a keeper as it got the thumbs twice in a row. Once again it keeps for a week in an airtight container but it’s unlikely to stick around that long. The recipe included nutritional information but its best not to look at that as it’s just too scary! So here it is.

Lemon and Cranberry Shortbread (The Gluten Free Cookbook – The Australian Women’s Weekly)
250g butter
3 tsp lemon rind
½ c caster sugar
1 ¾ c GF plain flour
1/3 c rice flour
1/3 c dried cranberries, chopped

1. Preheat oven 150C. Grease two oven trays
2. Beat butter, rind and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Sift in flours, add cranberries and knead dough (either in bowl on floured surface) until smooth
3. Divide dough in half, shape each on separate trays, into 20cm rounds. Mark each round into 12 wedges, prink with fork. Pinch eadges of rounds with fingers and sprinkle with white sugar.
4. Bake shortbread about 40 minutes. Stand 5 minutes, then using shark knife, cut into wedges. Cool on trays.
Enjoy!

In picture below: Carrot, orange and sultana muffins with orange butter icing, lemon and cranberry shortbread and melting moments with passionfruit butter icing. Photo courtesy of Neil Hinds Photography.