Winter is a time to indulge and there is no better feeling than dunking your favourite biscuit into a cup of tea, and it is incredibly easy to bake for yourself in no time at all.
Mary Berry’s shortbread takes around five minutes to prepare and takes 20 minutes to chill in the fridge before baking them in the oven.
What is fantastic about this recipe is that you only need five simple ingredients to make it, and Mary Berry suggests adding semolina flour to give the biscuit a rich flavour as well as make them more golden once they are cooked.
In her cookbook ‘My Kitchen Table: 100 Cakes and Bakes’, Mary said: “For a really good shortbread it is essential to use butter. I like to use semolina as well as flour to give the shortbread crunch, but you can use cornflour or ground rice instead.”
Shortbread is a simple homemade biscuit but it sure to impress any loved ones coming round to your home for the holidays and would be perfect to leave out for Santa on Christmas.
Method
To begin, preheat the oven to 160C (Fan 140C or Gas Mark 3). Then lightly grease a roasting tin or traybake tin with butter.
Pour the flour and semolina into a bowl and mix it together. Add the butter and sugar, then rub the mixture together will your fingertips until it begins to form a smooth dough.
Place the dough into the prepared tray and use a spatula to press it in and make sure it is evenly spread.
Prick the dough all over with a fork and then place it in the fridge to chill until the dough firms, which should take around 20 minutes.
Once you are ready to cook, bake the shortbread for 35 minutes until it is a pale golden brown colour.
After you take it out of the oven, sprinkle it with demerara sugar while it is still warm and leave the biscuit to cool in the tray for a few minutes.
Carefully cut the shortbread into 30 fingers and lift them out of the tray to finish cooling on a wire rack.
Store them in an airtight container to keep fresh if not eating them all that day.
