Melt in your mouth goodness

Not done with the lemons yet (see previous post), I decided to try my hand at shortbread, lemon flavoured of course.

I have always loved shortbread from the first time I tasted it about 25 years ago. I was just a kid at the time and some relatives visited from England (visitors from England always seemed to bring us either Quality Street chocolates or shortbread) with some shortbread.

At the time, I thought they were the most delicious biscuits ever. And, I don't know if this was true or just a way to get me off her back, but my mum told me then that shortbread was unavailable in Penang  -- so, they were truly treats that you'd savour cos you'd never know when you're ever gonna taste them again.

Since then of course, I have eaten a lot of shortbread and even bought some at the local supermarket. I never, however, ever dreamt of making shortbread. I always assumed they'd be difficult or at least tricky and required someone with real culinary skill.

Then I came upon a few recipes for different types of shortbread and they all seemed so simple.

Could it be?

Well, seriously, it is pretty easy to make. I followed a recipe from an old Australian Weekly mag I had in my closet. The recipe requited just 5 ingredients: wheat flour, rice flour (I used organic brown), butter, sugar and lemon juice and zest. Ok, 6 things.

Fortunately I had all the ingredients and I embarked upon my shortbread adventure with a few butterflies in my stomach. The consistency of the "dough" was really soft and I was a little worried. Anyhow, I baked it for 40 minutes (checking it once or twice) as instructed and was pleasantly surprised at the result. The shortbread was golden in colour, crisp and flaky on the outside with a little chewy inside. I thought it was a bit too buttery (I may reduce the butter from 250g to 220g next time) but my colleagues loved it.

I still think 250g is too much butter for anything!