Rich Shortbreads

Like any blogger I take a keen interest in the visitors to my blog. In particular, how people find me. A lot arrive through google or some other search engine. The keywords people use are endlessly interesting. Some make me wonder what is going on in their lives. Like the person who googled 'can jelly keep an egg from cracking'. Just what were they wanting to do with this egg? The mind boggles.

Then of course 'KJ' has an unfortunate association with certain kind of lubricant jelly. I imagine those people don't find much use for my recipes for banana cake and biscuits. Or maybe they do - who knows? The world is a strange place.

But what amazes me most of all is the number of people who are looking for Jamie Oliver's shortbread recipe. I blogged about this over two years ago. But this accounts for a full one-third of the keywords that have lead to my site. There were five people looking for this just yesterday. I guess I shouldn't be surprised as it is labelled as the 'world's best shortbread' after all. Jamie Oliver just can't help himself.

I however respectfully disagree. When it comes to shortbread this is far and away my favourite.



This rich shortbread recipe has been our family Christmas shortbread recipe for as long as I can remember. Incredibly light and tender it melts in the mouth. Half the batch always gets dipped in dark chocolate, which makes it even richer and extra delicious. Yum!!!

This was the shortbread I had in hand when my oven kicked up it's toes two days before Christmas. Thankfully, the electrician returned as promised and all was well. The shortbread dough did not seem to suffer from a night in the fridge. And we got to enjoy an incredibly tender and juicy cut of pickled marinated five spice pork for Christmas lunch. It was so good!! A perfect Christmas.

Rich Shortbread

250gm butter
4 tbspn icing sugar
1 cup cornflour
3/4 cup plain flour
1 tspn vanilla

Have the butter at room temperature. Cream the butter and icing sugar. Add the sifted flour and cornflour. Mix in the vanilla. Beat until smooth.

Place the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a 1 cm star tube. Pipe onto lightly greased oven trays,in shapes about 5 cm long.

Bake 180C oven for 12-15 minutes. Leave to cool for a few minutes and then remove to a wire rack. If desired, melt some dark chocolate over a double boiler and dip half the biscuits to half way. Leave to set.