21 April, 2012

shortbread deluxe

This Eric boy surprised me again. His shortbread is so nice, that it's going to be part of the usual Mrs Moore repertoire at home!
This is my second attempt for making shortbread, the first one was catastrophic (now I know). I mean for me it was fine, nice, edible buut that was the first time that I ate shortbread ever, and I did not have anything to compare with. So, the first attempt was nice if you have never eaten shortbread before. Husband did not even touch that portion, so from this you can see that it was no good at all...
All in all, today I had to try at least something from my goodie package, and I decided to make Eric's shortbread so that I can try my mega-fantastic cookie stamp
who told you that my cookies are not home made? 




Well, I must say that 1) the recipe is simply perfect as it is 2) and the cookie stamp functions perfectly (repetition it is but true).

Shortbread with blackberry coulis:
200g chilled butter
250g flour
100g icing sugar (I used 60g and it is perfectly enough. Eric has a very sweet tooth...)
2 egg yokes
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Rub the butter (only v. good quality butter to be used in this recipe) into the flour. Once it resembles to sea sand, sieve in the icing sugar (you need to get rid of the lumps in the icing sugar). Add the egg yokes and the vanilla and make a dough. You don't have to work it long, just two seconds and it gets its shape easily. Chill in the fridge for 1 h minimum. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius, and make the coulis while the biscuit is in the fridge. For that you will need:

300g blackberries (frozen is good)
100g raspberries
1 lemon juice and zest
3 Tbs of brown sugar

Put the berries, the lemon juice, the zest and the sugar in a dish and cook on the stove for 2-3 minutes. Then blend (if you have a blender) or mush with a fork, pass it through a sieve to get rid of the pips and cool until usage.

Remove the dough from the fridge, roll out between two layers of clingfilm to 0,5 cm thick, and cut out your favourite shapes. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes (and not more) and let it cool on the cooling rack before touching it (it is very fragile when it's piping hot). Serve the cookies with the blackberry coulis, and you will hear the angels singing Hallelujah!
no, it is not a tadpole on the right -  it is the blackberry coulis


No comments: