Recipe: Orange and Lemon Shortbread
I’ve been making this a fair bit this summer, both for guests on our creative course holidays and just for us to munch with coffee when we are at home. My daughter, Lucie, loved it on her last visit and asked for the recipe so I thought I’d share it here!
This is my version of a recipe I found in The Great British Book of Baking and I’ve adapted it to make it a little more citrus-y and mediterranean.
It is such an easy recipe and takes a very short period of time to make, but I will admit that having a food processor does make the process so much easier. Rubbing butter into flour by hand is a faff…
Orange and Lemon Shortbread
Serves 8
Cooking time: 25 minutes
Prep time: 10 minutes
INGREDIENTS
260g plain flour
95g - 100g sugar
40g cornflour
Zest of 1 unwaxed lemon
Zest of 1 unwaxed orange
A pinch of salt
200g salted butter
METHOD
Lightly grease a shallow, loose-bottomed cake tin, approximately 20-21cms diameter, and pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees celsius.
Place the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cornflour, salt and zest) into the food processor (or bowl, if you are mixing by hand). I have stated that you can use 95 - 100g of sugar; I always tend to err on the lower side so that the finished result is not overly sweet.
Mix the dry ingredients together.
Take the butter straight from the fridge and dice it into small cubes. Add these cubes to the flour mix and blitz in the food processor for around 25 seconds until the mix looks fine and there are no remaining chunks of butter. If you are doing the blending by hand, you want to rub the butter into the flour mix until you have the appearance of a bowl-full of fine breadcrumbs. The butter needs to be cold for this to work best.
Empty the mix into the prepared tin and gently smooth it out so that it is level, and press it down all around the tin; don’t press too hard, you just want to firm it down evenly.
Place in the pre-heated oven for 25 minutes until it is just firm and the edges are on the verge of turning golden. Do not overbake.
While the shortbread is warm, gently score the top with a knife into however many portions you want, and sprinkle some sugar over the surface.
This is delicious at any time of the day. We have it with afternoon tea and serve it with fresh fruit, yoghurt and homemade compôte for breakfast.
