Monday 7 December 2015

Christmassy cranberry and white chocolate shortbread

This month's Good Bitches Baking involves a special bake off. A whole bunch of good bitches are pitching in to help with a special Christmas bake-off partnership with Kiwibank. We were given two recipes to choose from and special instructions for delivering extra batches of goodness. Check out the #bakingitbetter hashtag to see what everyone's been up to.

I chose to make Christmassy shortbread as I already had the ingredients on hand and knew I could bake a batch with my limited time available after being out of town for the weekend. This is not my recipe but it's been baked by so many local bakers this week that I hope it's ok to share further. I've converted it into grams for those bakers (like me) who prefer to weigh their measurements. I'm also sharing some biscuit baking tips, mostly learned the hard way so you don't have to.

My tips:
  • Form two shorter logs to wrap in plastic and freeze. It's much easier to manage.
  • Freeze the dough logs until solid, otherwise they'll crumble when you cut them. This is good advice; trust me on this one.
  • Use a sharp bread knife to cut the logs into rounds before baking.
  • Make sure your baking trays are cold when you put the dough on them to cook. This stops the biscuits spreading too much and, along with cold dough, helps them keep their shape.

Christmassy cranberry and white chocolate shortbread

Ingredients
  • 225 g butter, very soft
  • 180 g (1 cup) icing sugar
  • 280 g (2 cups) flour
  • 135 g (2/3 cup) white chocolate, roughly chopped
  • 80 g (1/2 cup) dried cranberries, chopped
Method
  1. Beat butter and sugar with a wooden paddle until smooth. (This will take a couple of minutes.)
  2. Gradually add flour and mix until you can't see any dry flour.
  3. Stir in white chocolate and cranberries.
  4. Form into log shapes, about 4 cm in diameter. Wrap in plastic then put in freezer until frozen solid.
  5. Preheat oven to 160°C. Spray a cookie sheet or line two baking trays with baking paper.
  6. Cut frozen logs into rounds, about .5 cm thick. Place biscuits on cookie sheet, at least 2 cm apart.
  7. Bake for about 20 minutes, just until the edges start to turn golden.
  8. Let cool for about 5 minutes before removing from the tray and cooling on a wire rack.
Christmassy shortbread

No comments: