Spiced fruit and nut shortbreads

Ruth over at Makey-Cakey  has set up a seasonal ingredient swap. I missed her previous swap and so it was with some interest I read the principle behind it. Anyone who expresses an interest is paired up by Ruth and each person sends their partner an ingredient, preferably an interesting one, not a staple like flour! You then bake something with your received ingredient and Ruth posts a round up of everyone's creative bakes.

This time it was a seasonal swap, mind you the season is autumn, encompassing Halloween  bonfire night and thanksgiving, so the range of ingredients you could possibly send is very broad!

I was paired up with Frances. Frances does not have a blog herself but enjoys baking, looking at others blogs and taking part in baking challenges such as these.

Frances pointed out that it was the 200th anniversary of  the birth of Charles Dickens, and sent ingredients inspired by a passage from The mystery of Edwin Drood, one of Charles' works that I must confess that I have not read.

She sent me walnut pieces, dried cranberries and cinnamon (also some fab chocolatey sprinkles but I have other ideas for these!)

So I put my thinking cap on and slowly an idea began to emerge. When many people think of shortbread they think of clotted cream, strawberries and cream and ice cream. All very summery things. I decided to bring the shortbread biscuit into Autumn by using my sent ingredients.

Spiced fruit and nut shortbread biscuits

makes 10, easily doubled

100g butter
50g light brown sugar
115g plain flour
15g rice flour
heaped 1/2 tsp of cinnamon
25g of walnut pieces, roughly chopped
25g dried cranberries, roughly chopped

Cream together the butter and sugar until creamy. Add all the other ingredients and bring together, using a spoon, hands or combination of the two, until a dough is formed.

Divide the dough into two, wrap each in clingfilm and chill for 15-30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 160C/140C FAN. Roll out one piece of dough at a time a cut out what ever shape you like. Re-roll the trimmings and cut out more shapes. Its up to you but I do not like to roll more than twice as it makes the shortbread much less short. Place the shortbread shapes onto baking sheets. Repeat with the second piece  of dough.

If you want really sharp edges to your shortbread chill in the fridge or freezer for 15-30 minutes, this will help prevent the shortbread spread whilst baking. I did not really have time and as I made shortbread rounds it was not as important.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden. Allow to cool on the baking sheet for a couple of minutes then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.

These shortbread are genuinely one of my favourite shortbreads that I have made. Its highly tempting to use the leftover ingredients for more shortbread but I have another idea, so watch this space!

Clotted cream shortbread

When I was younger I went on a lot of family holidays to Cornwall and of the many fab memories I have, I remember lots of cream teas and I remember coming home with loads of shortbread for family members, and maybe a couple of boxes for the home biscuit tin too!

I had loads of clotted cream left over and so decided to make clotted cream shortbread. That was the easy part. Surprisingly there are very few clotted cream shortbread recipes about. So I adapted various other ones I have, I crossed everything and waited.

Clotted Cream Shortbread

makes ~20, dependant on size

75g clotted cream
75g butter, room temp
1 tsp vanilla paste or extract
75g caster sugar
200g plain flour
25g rice flour

Grease two baking sheets and preheat the oven to 170C/150C FAN. Soften the butter well with a wooden spoon. Add the clotted cream, vanilla and caster sugar to the bowl and cream by hand util everything is combined.

Add the flours and stir until the the mix comes together as a dough, you my need to press the remaining clumps together with your hands,  Lightly flour a surface and rolling pin and roll out the dough till about 1 cm thick. 

Cut out shapes with a cutter of your choice. Try and be clever with you stamping out. The more you work the dough the less short your short bread will be. Aim for just one or two re-rolls of the trimmings. Place the shapes on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until the shortbread biscuits are golden.

Transfer the biscuits to a wire rack and sprinkle with caster sugar while hot. 

Crossing everything worked! These were a delicious shortbread and perfect with a cup of tea/hot chocolate. Not entirely sure how long they keep for, about 3 days in my house!

I got a bit excited when I was coating them in sugar and decided to dye my sugar pink with a little bit of pink food gel. Well I had already cut out hearts so thought why not,  but don't they look pretty?

Stem ginger shortbread

We have all been there, so much happening in such a short space of time that it can inevitably only end in one of two ways. Killing someone, or sitting in a crumpled heap rocking yourself and sobbing. Not wishing to partake in either activity I settled on a third option, bake something comforting.

Now in the middle of a rather hectic move I only had the basic ingredients, and being the middle of lent, chocolate was most definitely out, I wanted my sweet treat to be relatively fast and fuss free which ruled out waiting for things to cool before smothering them in frosting.

And then like a little beacon of hope there it was, a little jar of stem ginger.

Armed with the Great British bake off cookbook I set about making myself some stem ginger shortbread cookies.

I have used this recipe before, but just for vanilla and chocolate shortbreads. It is the most crumbly buttery shortbread imaginable but I do have one issue with the recipe. Once the dough is made I am supposed to be able to roll it into a log shape, refrigerate it and then slice off nice little rounds. I have never been able to get this dough into a log, it is just too crumbly, and I am conscious of not wishing to work it too much, tough shortbread is not nice.  

I have learnt that I can sort of bash it flat a bit and then roll it out. This seems to hold the dough together enough to roll it out.

If you are gentle the trimmings can be re-rolled and I have found it does not affect the end biscuit, hurrah.

The stem ginger version off these shortbreads is by far my favourite, the ginger is not too overpowering and the buttery texture is extremely morish. However if ginger is not your thing then omit the ground and stem ginger and add a teaspoon of vanilla paste to the creamed butter and sugar mix, then leave plain or throw in a handful of choc chips, or finely grated lemon zest, alternatively exchange a couple of tablespoons of plain flour with cocoa powder, as they say, the possibilities are endless.

Stem ginger shortbread (from the great british bake off cookbook)

Butter                        200g

Caster sugar             100g

Plain Flour                260g

Rice Flour                 40g

Ground ginger         ½tsp

Stem ginger              50g

Preheat the oven to 170^oC and grease 2 baking sheets

Finely chop the stem ginger

Cream the butter with a mixer, or good old elbow grease if you are that way inclined, until well softened, add the sugar and continue to mix until light and fluffy.

Add all the other ingredients to the bowl and bring together with your hands to form a dough. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for 15-30 minutes. If you are rolling the dough closer to 15 minutes is best.

Roll out the dough to 1cm thick and stamp out shapes of your choice.

Bake in a preheated oven for 20 minutes.

Enjoy with a cup of tea or plenty of cold milk!