Not Your Average Shortbread

Ever since I bought the Baking with Julia book many years ago, I have been eying this recipe for Hungarian shortbread, but I have never made it.  The photos are really enticing.  There’s this jewel-like layer of jam sandwiched between two shortbread layers and it is all showered with a generous coating of powdered sugar.  I have been longing for this shortbread.  So, why have I waited 12 years to make it?  I’ll tell you why.

A pound of butter.  The recipe calls for a pound of butter and makes just one 9 by 12 inch pan of shortbread.  For some reason, that just seemed like an awful lot of butter, even for me, and I do not normally shy away from butter content at all.  In fact, I have been known to go through multiple pounds of butter in a day, but I do a lot of bulk baking and I freeze a lot for future events.

Anyway, excuses aside, I was excited to finally try this recipe because I thought it would be really good.  I mean, can you go wrong with a pound of butter, some flour, egg yolks, and jam?  Also, I was interested in its unusual method of freezing the cookie dough and then grating it into the pan.  Getting the dough together and shaped into tubes that would fit in my food processor was easy enough.

With the food processor, grating was really easy and just took a few seconds.  I wanted two different flavors, so I used two eight inch pans.  The grated dough looks a lot like grated cheese.  After I spread out the bottom layer, I baked the bottoms for 15 minutes first.

After the bottom baked for a bit, I took them out and spread jam on top.  I used jams I made last year: one was a rhubarb jam with candied ginger and the other was a raspberry blueberry jam.  I wanted to stay faithful to the recipe, but, honestly, not everyone likes rhubarb.  My husband and I love it, but my kids, not so much.  Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be too bothered by this, but we are talking about a pound of butter here and I didn’t think it wise that the husband and I should be “stuck” with the whole pan.   This way, most people would be happy and I wouldn’t have to buy a whole new wardrobe.

Anyway, the shortbread looked and smelled delicious coming out of the oven.  I think I tried to pull out one of them a little early.  That is why one of them appears cracked.  I pushed it back together and had no issues with it.  The bars stayed together just fine.

This time, I planned ahead a little and made sure to make this on a day when a good friend was coming over for a chinwag.  It was great.  Finally, after all these great recipes, I was able to have a little tea party.  These were perfect with tea.  They were a little crunchy, but then they melted in your mouth.  The rhubarb jam was a great, tart contrast and the berry was very yummy as well. All the kids chose berry and they were inhaled at a record pace.  I think the grating of the dough really made this a fluffy shortbread, not the dense, crunchy kind you normally think of when you hear the word shortbread.

The rhubarb version is in the foreground and the berry is in the back.  We had a great time chatting and I was happy to discover that my dear friend loves rhubarb!  Now, clearly, we did not eat them all.  I sent some home with her, but still had over two dozen left, so I took them with me to a workshop over the weekend.  When it was over, the tin was empty.  Everyone loved them.  The husband even said that they were the best shortbread he has ever had.  And now, I’m a little sad that we don’t have any left over.  I think I may have to make some more.

Now that I think about it, a pound of butter is not so bad.  I got 32 servings from my two pans, which makes it about one tablespoon of butter per bar.  That’s better than a piece of pie.  I have a lot more jam in the cupboard.  I wonder what I should try next?  Fig citrus?  Cherry grapefruit?  Apricot butter?  Strawberry Peach?

You can try these yourself.  I highly recommend the food processor for grating–I can only imagine the mess when doing it by hand.  The recipe is posted here and here.

Tea + Me = Sanity

Every morning when I wake up, I make myself a nice cup of tea.  Real tea.  No herbal tea for first thing in the morning.  And none of that lame Lipton stuff either.  There is only one brand of tea that I like to have in the mornings.  When I run out, I get get a little grumpy.

Brodie’s of Edinburgh.  I discovered this tea when the husband was in grad school.  The closest grocery store to our sardine tin sized apartment was this super gourmet store called Andronico’s.  It was the only one I could go to by myself because it was on the campus bus route and, at the time, I did not drive.  It was the sort of store that made its own pate for sale and had a butcher’s counter.  I Love butcher’s counters!  But, that’s another story.  I’m talking about tea.

So, I found this tea at Andronico’s and when I tried it, it was a revelation.  I had never seen tea this color.

It’s like a nice, rich, orangey-brown color.   And when I took a sip–Wow!  It’s really strong, but not at all tannin-y.  Tannin is a bitter flavor that makes your mouth feel kind of tacky.  Some unripe fruits have lots of tannin.  Most times, when you over-brew tea, you get a very strong tannin flavor.  With Brodie’s, though, you could leave the tea bag in for 10 minutes and it still would not have a taste of tannin.  It was love at first taste.

Now, we enjoyed this tea very much, but when we moved away and back to the East Coast, I could not find it anywhere.  It was tough.  I tried to make do with Taylor’s (it’s ok, but not the same), Twinings (blah, blah), and even Harney’s (weak), but nothing could compare.  So, I order off the internet.  I order a lot.  Of each kind.  They make 4 different kinds:  Scottish Breakfast (my morning cuppa), Scottish Teatime (great for afternoon tea with a piece of cake), Famous Edinburgh (the husband’s fave), and Edinburgh Tattoo (the strongest and great for when you need a little extra pick-me-up).  I order bagged for convenience and loose because loose tea really does taste better.

I start my day with a nice cuppa and it sets me up for the day.  I have another cuppa in the afternoon when I start to drag a bit.  I am so thankful for this tea.  It gives me a few minutes of calm when I drink it.  It keeps me sane.

And, sometimes, when I am drinking it, I like to think about maybe visiting Scotland someday.