Alioth's Journal: Exotic shortbread

I've not done any baking for ages, so I decided to make some shortbread, with a slight difference. Shortbread is very simple - it's a 3:2:1 ratio (by weight) of flour, butter and castor sugar in that order (and that's it). But I added a little exotic flavour twist, four calamondin oranges (freshly picked from the garden).

In a mixing bowl, 250g butter (i.e. one block of butter, in the US this would be two sticks) and 125g sugar.

Mix the sugar/butter with an electric beater thingy until it forms particles. Chop the calamondins (don't bother peeling them, they have very thin peel anyway) and then add the chopped calamondins to the bowl, and continue mixing with the beater until the butter/sugar/calamondin mix has become well whipped.

Then add the 375g flour, mix with the beater until it ends up having a coarse gravelly texture. Then knead in the bowl until it's a clump, then knead on a floured surface for around 5 minutes or so (until it gets a little sticky).

Roll out flat, cut into whatever shapes you want the resulting biscuits to be, dust with some castor sugar, poke holes in the top with a fork, and bake in the oven at 180 celcius until they start going golden brown (around 15 to 20 mins, depending on the oven). Cool on a wire rack.

The citrus taste in shortbread makes it even more awesome. (I think the citrus needs to be very citrusy - oranges are probably too much water to citrus taste, but calamondin oranges are far more sour so you need less of them. I suspect lime would also work well).

you put da lime in da coconut...

[TinaMarie]

That sounds really good! I bet it would be fantastic with key limes.