My home baked shortbread biscuits are always popular at break times in the studio, I think the addition of sea salt to the sweet buttery mixture makes them ridiculously moreish. After much prompting from visitors, here is my top secret recipe which I hope you will enjoy following.
Ingredients: makes approx. 20 small biscuits
5oz plain flour
1oz semolina
2oz caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence / extract
4oz *salted butter (soft)
½ tsp course sea salt
(Some extra caster sugar for dusting)
Place all ingredients in a mixing bowl. You can now either rub through by hand or use an electric mixer / food processor.
With your hands, bring together to form a firm ball of dough, roll into a fat cylindrical sausage shape approx. 2 ½ “diameter. Wrap in either cling film or baking parchment and chill in the fridge for ½ hour, so it becomes more firm.
When firm, slice roundels with a sharp knife approx. 2/8” thick. Place on a lined baking tray with baking parchment. (I prefer making my biscuits this way, as they look nice and rustic and home baked, but you can roll out and use a biscuit cutter if you prefer)
Place in a preheated oven 160 c or Gas 3 set timer for 15 minutes check for colour, if still very light bake for a further 5 minutes until golden brown. (Take care, don’t take your eye off of them as they can catch or over bake quickly)
Dust the biscuits immediately with caster sugar while still hot on the baking tray, the heat of the fresh baked biscuit helps the sugar adhere to the surface. Leave the biscuits now for 15 minutes to cool on the tray, then carefully flip the warm biscuit over to cool on the other side. This helps crisp the biscuit up, but be careful as they will still be very fragile at this point. After about half an hour the biscuits are then firmer enough to transfer to a cooling rack if you have one.
Store in an airtight tin or tub.
Hint: If ever the biscuits lose their crispness, you can always heat through in an air fryer or a warm oven for 5 minutes then repeat the cooling process. They will return to being nice and crisp again.
*you can substitute the butter either fully or half and half with hard block margarine…..but soft margarine and low calorie margarine doesn’t work, as you won’t get the crispness in the texture of the biscuit.