Life is short(bread)....

It is hard to beat a rich buttery #shortbread. If you get it right, it just melts in the mouth! It’s also a perfect biscuit for decorating as it holds its shape well when you bake it, a bit like a sugar cookie but (in my humble opinion) even more delicious!

This #recipe is a favourite in my family. It’s adapted from the recipe my mum makes pretty much every New Year and it is always gone in the blink of an eye! In this particular recipe I have added lemon, but you can experiment with other flavours too. Maybe adding almonds or cocoa powder to make alternative flavours. If you do this, I recommend replacing some of the flour with these ingredients or you will end up with too much dry ingredients and the dough will not form properly.

Another reason I chose this recipe as the first post on my new baking blog is because of the decorating. One of the biggest draws to baking for me was the opportunity to get a bit creative with the decorating. Unfortunately, my day job (working in a lab) doesn’t leave much room for getting creative as things could get dangerous pretty quickly if I decided to see what would happen if I just started mixing chemicals together! So, I have adopted baking as my creative outlook, and luckily for me it also means I get to eat more (which is never a bad thing right?!)! The methods of decorating I’ve used here calls for #royalicing, as you would normally use for cookies, and two different-but-easy ways of getting a ‘painted flower’ look.

Top tip: If you are wanting to try the #rose decoration you need the background colour to still be wet so I suggest you do one cookie at a time. For the painted #pansy the opposite is true, you need the background to be more firm so either leave them to set for an hour and come back to them or prepare them to this stage the day before and paint on the flowers the following day (this is also a great idea if you have a hectic schedule).

Equipment:

Cookie cutter of desired shape

Rolling pin

Backing sheet

Piping bags

Clean paintbrush (small)

Cocktail sticks/needle scribers

Recipe: Makes 15 shortbread cookies

For the shortbread-

200g plain flour

100g cornflour

100g icing/confectioner’s sugar

200g unsalted butter

Rind of 2 lemons

Juice of half a lemon

For the icing-

2 egg whites

420g icing/confectioner’s sugar

Juice of half a lemon

Baking: 40 mins Decorating: 1 hr+

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 140°C/280F

2. Sift the flour and sugar together (with any other dry ingredients you are using).

3. Rub in the butter as if you were making the topping for a crumble. Once incorporated add the lemon zest and juice of half a lemon (or any other wet ingredients you are flavouring your dough with). (Image 1).

4. Mix until the dough is bound together.

5. Lightly dust a work surface and rolling pin with flour and roll out to about half a cm thick. If you want, you can do thicker shortbread pieces but make sure you add a bit of extra time for baking.

6. Cut out your desired shapes and prick with a fork. (Image 2).

7. Bake in the oven for 30 mins or until they are a pale golden colour. (Image 3).

8. Leave to cool before icing (This could be a good stopping point if you don’t want to do it all in one day).

Painted pansy decoration: (See video 1)

When I did these #cookies I did the background first, left it to set whilst I did the other decoration then went back to these ones. If you want to just do one style of decoration I recommend leaving them for 1 hr-overnight once the background colour is added before doing the design.

1.Outline a flower shape using a #1 piping nozzle (or the smallest round one you have!).

2. Using a paintbrush smear the inner part of the outline in towards the centre of the flower. Leave some of the outline along both the outside and where you want your individual petals.

3. Repeat this process, adding in a smaller flower ‘inside’ the bigger one to give another layer of petals.

4.Finish by adding 2-4 small dots in the centre of the flower (Image 4).

Rose decoration: (See video 2)

This is a beautiful decoration that I love doing. It looks impressive but is easy to do. Unlike the painted pansy you need the background colour to me wet for this design so I did one cookie at a time.

1. Add a small doughnut shaped circle to your wet background colour in the colour you want your rose to be.

2. Using a cocktail stick or needle scriber modelling tool swirl the colours together in an elliptical motion to make the centre of the rose.

3. For the outer petals, use wider ‘U’ shaped motions to bring the colour down and out to the sides.

4. To finish, pipe two green dots at the base of the rose and draw your decorating tool through it from the centre, out towards the sides to create the leaves (Image 5).

Image 1