Directions
Making the Dough
Cream the butter and sugar. Add the flour, and work well together.
The result is fairly dry, and does not cohere as a single mass. This is not an
error, and you should not add more butter to try to get the ingredients to stick together.
Scoring the Dough
Press the shortbread dough into an 8 inch round pie plate.
(If desired, the pie plate may be lined first with foil wrap.) With a sharp knife,
cut the dough in the following way:
|
cut a circle about 1½ inches in diameter in the centre of the dough;
|
|
surround this with three concentric circles, equally spaced;
|
|
using radial cuts, score the dough into quarters, leaving the central disk intact;
|
|
using radial cuts, score through the quarters in the outer two circles, dividing them into
eighths;
|
|
using radial cuts, score through the outermost circle, dividing each section in two to
produce sixteenths.
|
The resultant pieces, save for the inner circle, should be approximately
one to two inches long and half to one inch across. As the shortbread is fairly thick,
most of the pieces will be roughly cubical, save for the curvature and the irregularity of
the cuts.
Baking
Bake the shortbread in a 325°F oven for about three quarters of an
hour, until it is a light golden brown in colour. Remove it from the oven, and allow it
to cool in the pan on a wire rack.
The shortbread can be broken into pieces as soon as it is
cool. Alternatively, the entire shortbread can be lifted out of the pan and stored in
a tin; and pieces can be broken off as needed.
Makes 28 smaller pieces and one large one.
|