27th January 2013
A quick and easy recipe today, something that wouldn’t take long. My original plan was for a chocolate cake, but it seems that somebody in my house had been at the dark chocolate, so I had to change plans as I didn’t have enough. I need to find a new hiding place for it…
Looking through the recipe this appears to be shortbread, with a few variations!
The oven was put on to preheat at 140°C and a square 18cm (7″) tin retrieved from the cupboard. Retrieve being the word – it was right at the very back!
Into a bowl went 100g plain flour, 25g ground almonds (of which I have bags and bags) and 25g semolina. This was given a quick stir together and then 100g butter, 50g caster sugar and a couple of drops of almond extract was added. The ingredients were rubbed together to form a dough. A gentle knead for a few seconds to make it smooth and it was ready to be pressed into the tin. Once the surface had been levelled 25g flaked almonds were sprinkled over the surface (luckily I didn’t use them all up in my last recipe).
The tin was put into the oven for 30 minutes. After this time I didn’t feel the shortbread was quite cooked, so I left it for another five minutes. Once removed from the oven the shortbread was marked into 12 fingers and sprinkled quite liberally with caster sugar and left to cool in the tin.
The shortbread itself was very buttery and had a lovely flavour. I’m not really sure it was worth the effort putting the flaked almonds on top, although they did make it pretty. The photo doesn’t really do them justice, by now it was dark and the lighting in my kitchen is obviously quite bright! I took this quickly as I didn’t think they’d be around for long.
Self Raising Flower 