Tag: butter

Sables

200g plain flour
80g icing sugar
pinch salt
3 egg yolks
130g unsalted butter, cold & diced
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 egg beaten, to glaze

Mix the flour, sugar and butter to a ‘fine sand’ then add the egg yolks to make a firm dough. chill for 15 mins in the fridge.

Roll out to 5mm thick, and cut to rounds with a fluted cutter. place on a baking sheet and brush with egg. chill for 15 mins. brush again and nake at 180˚c for12 mins

Butterscotch

150ml/1/4 pint of water
450g/1lb Demerara sugar
50g/2oz butter

Poor water into pan and bring to boil add sugar and butter, heat slowly stirring till sugar dissolves and butter melts, bring to boil and cover pan and boil gently for 2 mins

uncover continue to boil with out stirring for about 12 mins
(or until little of mixture dropped into cold water separates into threads)
Pour into a buttered tin.

Shortbread

Shortbread is a Scottish classic biscuit, perfect with a hot chocolate. The trick is to get the texture right, the more corn flour or rice flour you add, the more it crispy crumbly it becomes. Too much corn/rice flour makes it dry and unpleasant, and too little makes it more like a pastry than a biscuit- it becomes difficult to get crisp and light.

There are a couple of recipes below to experiment with- both make good shortbread, but I haven’t hit the ideal yet!

Shortbread I
225g/8oz unsalted butter
75g/3oz caster sugar
350g/12oz plain flour
15g/0.5oz cornflour/riceflour
Cream butter & sugar
Mix in flours
Roll to 5mm/0.25″
180c/350f/gm4 for 20-25mins

Shortbread II
125g butter
55g caster sugar
140g plain flour
40g rice flour

190c for 20 mins

Flapjacks

 Preheat an oven to 160°C for soft flap Jacks, or 170°C for crispy ones

10oz butter
4oz brown sugar
1 tblsp golden syrup
20oz oats

Melt the butter  in a large saucepan. Add sugar and  golden syrup.

After all of the fat has melted and sugar dissolved,  stir in the oats to produce a uniform mixture.

Spread the mixture evenly in a baking tray. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 15 – 20 minutes, the longer it is baked, the crispier they will be.

Flapjack 2

300g oats
225g soft light brown sugar
225g butter
100g raisins
a small knob of ginger, cut into tiny bits

Grease a baking tray (mine’s about 20cm/9” square). Set the oven to 160C/325F/Gas Mark 3. Melt the butter in a saucepan and once melted add the sugar. Warm gently, then remove from the heat and stir in the oats, raisins and ginger. Press into the baking tray (if your hands are wet I think the mixture sticks to you less).

Bake for up to 20 minutes. Don’t wait for the flapjack to turn brown, as if you leave it too long it’ll end up far too hard. Cut into squares or slices while it’s warm, then leave in the tray to cool.

These amounts give me 16 chunky squares using my baking tray. You can leave out the raisins and ginger if you like. And you can add 90ml/6 tbsp of golden syrup when adding the sugar; this gives you flapjack that’s more sticky than crumbly. This recipe’s a combination of one in a modern Mrs Beeton book and one my grandma used to make.

Flapjack 3 (Auntie Gwen’s recipe)

100g butter
75g brown sugar
3 tblsp golden syrup
175g rolled oats
50g plain flour
pint of salt

mix as usual, and pack into a 20cm square tin. Cook at 170°c  for 30mins.