First of all must say thank you to everyone for comments over the last two days that I've failed miserably at replying to for no good reason that I can think of.
Anyway onto today's post..................
Why do the shops sell more shortbread at Christmas than any other time of the year?
Shortbread originated in Scotland and was expensive to make, so was often given as a gift at Hogmany and weddings. The idea might have first come from French pastry chefs when Scotland and France were often allies.
According to wiki the first printed recipe, in 1736, was from a Scotswoman named Mrs McLintock. In my book 'Christmas Fare' by Judith Holder and Alison Harding they include a recipe from a 19C cookery book by a Mrs Dalgairn which includes 'caraway comfits' (sugared caraway seeds) and then 50 years later the more well known English cook Eliza Atkins gives a recipe for 'Good Scottish Shortbread' which was remarkably similar to Mrs Dalgairn's ..........
With one pound of flour mix well two ounces of sifted sugar and one of candied orange-rind or citron sliced small; make these into a paste with from eight to nine ounces of good butter, made sufficiently warm to be liquid; press the paste together with the hands and mould it upon tins into large cakes 1 inch thick, pinch the edges, and bake in a moderate oven for twenty minutes, or longer should it not be quite crisp, but do not allow it to become deeply coloured.
Another recipe included in 'Christmas Fare' is said to come from Ayrshire and is a rich shortbread using cream and eggs and no peel and was always made into a round and cut into 'petticoat tails'. So named because of their shape or maybe a corruption of the French petits galettes - little cakes.
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| photo from internet |
For years I had a recipe for Shortbread given to me by Great Aunt Ann, who I think was originally from Scotland. It used a mix of flour and cornflour along with butter and castor/icing sugar - but somewhere in the last 20 years that recipe disappeared from my folder to be replaced by a recipe from the lady who made shortbread biscuits every week for the WI Country Market in Framlingham. Wish I hadn't lost that old recipe as it was made by pressing the mix into a round tin whereas the more recent has to be rolled into a cylinder shape, chilled and then sliced - more fiddly.
This is the WI recipe, very traditional and using only 3 ingredients in 3:2:1 ratio
