Shortbread, especially at Christmas time is an absolute MUST in our household. It's almost an old age tradition to have shortbread at Christmas time, especially in England. We were bought up with shortbread at Christmas time, especially 'Scottish Shortbread'.
It's absolutely delicious!
It's moreish, buttery and crumbly.
By itself Scottish Shortbread is wonderful. However, we wanted to make it even more special for a Christmas celebrations, and so we decided to add some orange zest, and dark chocolate.
Chocolate orange is one of our absolute flavour combinations, especially during the festive season.
The shortbread recipe is super simple and is the same recipe we use for plain shortbread, we just leave out the orange zest, and chocolate topping. We just tend to add a little more sprinkled sugar on top.
The shortbread dough comes together in the food processor - super quick and super simple.
One thing to note is, the better the butter, the better your shortbread. After all, that is the star of this recipe.
Shortbread, also makes for a delicious homemade Christmas gift. We know, we would love to receive some as a gift.
Let's crack on with this simple yet delicious recipe.
Happy Baking!
The Chai Home 😋
INGREDIENTS
Makes 18 finger slices
230g of Salted Room Temperature Butter (the better the quality, the better the shortbread)
4x cups of Plain Flour
1x cup of White Caster Sugar (plus extra for topping)
Zest of 1 large Orange
For the topping
180g of Good Quality Dark Chocolate - melted
METHOD
Preheat the oven to 180C and line a 30 x 20cm baking dish with parchment paper.
Add your sugar to a small bowl along with the orange zest. Rub together between your fingertips until the zest is thoroughly combined with the sugar.
The next part depends on the size of your food processor. We had to do it in two batches to enable it to mix properly.
Add all of the ingredients to your food processor and blitz until everything has combined together and created your biscuit dough.
Turn out into your lined baking dish and evenly press down into the base of your dish.
With a fork prick your biscuit dough all over. We like to do it in columns for a nice and neat look, but it really doesn't matter.
Sprinkle with a little caster sugar.
Pop it onto the top shelf of your preheated oven and bake for 30 - 35-minutes.
Remove from the oven and allow to fully cool in the baking dish.
When it has just been removed we like to use a knife and score the shortbread into our desired size slices. Leave to cool completely in the dish.
Prepare a large sheet of parchment paper for decorating your shortbread. You can do this on your worktop, or on a large cookie sheet.
Once cooled you can go ahead and melt your chocolate. For best results melt over a low heat using the bain-marie method.
When it's melted we like to pour it into a short narrow glass, which we find easier for dipping the shortbread into.
Remove the shortbread from the tray and parchment and slice. We slice ours into finger sized strips.
Dip one end of the shortbread into the chocolate, remove and place on your prepared parchment sheet.
Repeat until all of the shortbread fingers have been dipped.
With the remaining chocolate we like to flick and drizzle over the un-dipped part.
Leave until the chocolate has harden, then serve and enjoy!
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