Shortbread

Shortbread is a wonderful crumbly biscuit originating from medieval Scotland, which has kept its popularity until this day. Only three ingredients (butter, sugar, flour) are needed, but the making can be trickier than you think.

 

This was my first time making shortbread just on the eve of the Burns Night. They turned out pretty good, but I'm still determined to make better and more authentic ones next time. I have based my experiment on a recipe on the BBC Food page, and these are the results. 

125 g butter

55 g caster sugar + some extra for dusting

180 g wheat flour

Whisk the soft butter and sugar and add flour. Knead to a dough, which can be quite crumbly. Roll the dough into about 1 cm thickness.

Cut the shortbread out with a round or rectangular cookie cutter, place them on baking paper and sprinkle with caster sugar.

Chill the shortbread in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

Finally bake them at 190C for about 15-20 minutes. Try to avoid browning, which I couldn't quite manage this time due to my slightly thinner shortbread and lack of keeping an eye on the oven.

Chill for a while and enjoy with a nice cup of tea or coffee.

Your VegHog

Gingerbread cookies

Baking gingerbread cookies before Christmas belongs to the important yearly Christmas traditions for me. It can be nice family fun to bake and decorate the cookies, hogs and hoglets alike can participate. This time I took the easy way out with the ready made Ikea gingerbread cookie dough, so the baking went quite smoothly, but still resulted in lovely looking woodland animals collection. I like to make the cookies very thin so that they are crispy after the baking and then get a light decoration. Decoration isn't necessarily needed, the cookies are tasty even without.

Ingredients

550g gingerbread cookie dough

Flour

For decorating (optional):

Icing sugar

Lemon juice

Food colouring

Tyrkisk Peber extract and crush

Different cookie decorations

Take small pieces of the dough and roll them out thinly on a floured even surface. Cut out any shapes you like with cookie cutters. For me the hedgehog shape was obviously the natural choice, but I also made other animal shapes and even Finland shaped cookies.

Bake the cookies on baking paper at 175C for about 6 minutes until crispy. Keep an eye on them while they are in the oven as the thin ones can bake quite quickly and start blackening around the edges.

Let the cookies cool fully before decorating. Make the coloured icing in the meanwhile. Of course ready made coloured icing can be purchased, but it's nice to fiddle around making your own. I normally just add lemon juice to icing sugar and whisk it to a smooth icing, which needs to be fairly thick as you don't want it to escape the cookies. Add food colouring carefully as it might make the mix too liquid and then you would need to add icing sugar again. I also made one special icing of salty liquorice type of flavour with Tyrkisk Peber extract.

I always make my own piping bag either out of a freezing bag or baking paper rolled into a funnel. I think that life might be easier with a proper piping bag or ready made icing from the tube, but I'm used to it this way. Squirt all sorts of shapes and figures on the cookies, you can even write on them if you like.

Then also sprinkle any sprinkles you like on the icing when it's still soft, so these will stick to it. Then let the icing get hard in peace and later place the cookies into a Christmas tin or share them with your friends.

 

Get creative and have fun!

Your VegHog

Brazil nut cookies

Hello!

It's April and we are going to bake some cookies today to start the month off sweet. These are quick and easy cookies but please note that my ingredient amounts are only approximate, unfortunately I'm not quite sure anymore how much I used of which ingredient.

Ingredients

1dl Brazil nuts

1dl Butter

1dl Sugar

1 Egg

2dl Flour

1tsp Baking powder

1tsp Vanilla extract

½ tsp Salt

Start by chopping the brazil nuts. I chopped them quite coarsely in order to have bigger nut chunks in the cookies. Foam the butter and sugar with a hand mixer and then add the egg to the mix. Mix the dry ingredients together and add to the butter and sugar. Then also add the brazil nuts.

I shaped huge cookies out of them so I only had six mega cookies in the end, but please make smaller ones if you don't want them to be so massive. Shape whatever size you'd like (bearing in mind that they'll slightly grow in the oven) on a greased baking tray and bake at 200C for about 20 minutes until the cookies get some nice colouring.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog