Curry Recipes Online
Curry Chat => Talk About Anything Other Than Curry => Topic started by: chriswg on August 25, 2010, 07:22 AM
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I know this isn't the best forum for this but I know we have some great experimental cooks in here that strive for perfection with each dish rather that settling for a standard recipe.
I'm hoping this will be one of those times and some of you will have an ultimate shortbread recipe up their sleeve. I got railroaded into entering a competition for the local gardening club, they have a men only cooking class and this year it is shortbread. I intend to win the rosette :)
Any help would be very much appreciated.
Ta
Chris
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This one seems to have good write ups, remember to fry some garlic in a load of oil before you bung it in the wok ( couple of chillies too I reckon)!
Shortbread, Scottish.
1 Cup Cornflour
1 Cup Rice flour
1 Cup All Purpose Flour
1 Cup Icing Sugar
1 lb butter ( yes- you are reading correctly- a whole pound of butter! )
optional- 1tsp vanilla
Preheat oven to 400F. ( You will turn it down to 350 when you put cookies in)
Blend the dry ingredients into the softened butter. (I used a food processor to blend with no problems)
Spread the batter ( which will seem more like a spread than batter) into 2 pie plates or rectangular 8 x11 pan.
Turn oven down to 350F.
Bake for 20-25 mins- check often and remove from oven when golden or pale brown. Prick with fork all over surface. Cut when still warm ( the shortbread get very hard and will be impossible to cut when cooled).
Store in cool dry place .
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Thanks VC but the other competitors take this very seriously so a good recipe might not be enough. I need a USP to set mine apart. Adding chilli might not be a bad suggestion, vanilla and chilli shortbread might work - I'm guessing no one has tried before.
I'm planning on using ground rice as the main ingredient as I like the grittiness it provides. I have seen recipes which include custard powder so I might give that a go although vanilla pods or essence will probably do the same job but better.
What would Heston Blumenthal do? Probably add popping candy... hmmm.
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Where can I get a chilli shaped cookie cutter by Friday???
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Chris I can't help with the recipes i'm afraid I simply haven't tried baking at all. But this site seems like a good place to start: http://www.shortbreadrecipe.org.uk/ (http://www.shortbreadrecipe.org.uk/) The toffee and pecan sounds rather tasty.
If you want to use chilli what about a chocolate and chilli shortbread. The two go hand in hand.
I watched a program last night on baking a chap did ginger snap biscuits with homemade candied ginger. What about a candied ginger shortbread?
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Chilli and chocolate shortbread?
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Cool idea Axe
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I have emailed to clarify the rules. Toffee and pecan shortbread would kick arse, but I bet it has to be plain!
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process the toffee and pecan so they don't notice it? ;D
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I'm thinking I might try this:
4 oz (100 g) margarine
1/4 cup (50 g) 2 oz caster sugar (superfine granulated)
pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 3/4 cup (170 g) 6 1/2 oz plain flour (All purpose)
25 g (1 oz) ground rice
25 g (1 oz) custard powder
caster sugar (superfine granulated) for sprinkling
But use butter instead of marg (I bought some expensive Channel Islands butter), and add in some chopped toffee to the mixture. I'll then caramelize some pecans and gently press half a pecan into the middle of each biscuit.
Thoughts???
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Sounds good, wouldn't the rice flour be a bit strong though?
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Sorry, misread the amount of rice flour, thought it was 250g! Whoa
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I'm not sure about the rice flour and would be careful how you add the toffee. Perhaps you could use a caramel essence instead or with the vanilla especially as your using custard powder.
After thought, how can I squeeze some toffee liqueur in to the recipe, could I soak the pecans in it?
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Make the toffee from melted sugar with processed pecans?
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How about a variation of millionares shortbread, thick biscuit base with a thin layer of the caramel topped with chopped pecan. You could even finish that with a toffee glaze.
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I went for the recipe as per my previous post but I added some small chips of butterscotch to the mixture. Caramelizing the pecans was good fun but probably didn't add anything to the result. If anything it probably detracted from the lovely shortbread taste. I added them on mainly for the aesthetics and to show off. The judging is at 3pm, I'm not holding my breath!
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Crappy WI judge. Only 5 people entered, prizes for top 3, nothing for me!
Apparently the WI judges look for traditional looking shortbread rather than going by taste. Only the tiniest bit had been nibbled, no where near enough to be able to judge the actual taste - which was amazing by the way. She hadn't even tried the pecan. I guess thinking outside the box was a bad call in this case. It wouldn't have mattered if it was made out of sand as long as it looked traditional.
Anyway rant over. My Jalapenos picked up a 2nd prize in the 'any other' category. Narrowly losing out to some mini courgettes LOL.
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You gave it ya best shot, well done. ;)