Recipe 28: Stem ginger shortbread

Now you may have noticed that most of the recipes so far have been savoury rather than sweet, and there’s a reason for that. I generally much prefer savoury to sweet food. As a kid I used to love biscuits, but not normally chocolate ones, more shortbread (who doesn’t like them?) digestives and malted milk. But this love has waned as I’ve grown older and if it were a choice between a freshly buttered croissant (maybe with some cheese and a little ham) and some chocolate fudge cake, the croissant would win hands down every time.

It may be for this reason that I wasn’t overly impressed with Recipe 27, the chocolate and ginger biscuits. Thinking they were too sweet I was unsure what my colleagues would make of a tin full of the things when I brought them in for our tea-time treat: 36 large biscuits between half a dozen people - they were going to be there a week at least. However, a lady from the Quality Department (amazing that such departments exist, eh?) popped into the office this morning and, as I looked up from my computer to see how I could help I, I saw that it wasn’t me she was coming to, but the biscuit tin. As she lifted the lid she exclaimed, “It’s the last one!” This was under 48 hours from bringing in the things. Based on this evidence, I think they were far better than I imagined; it was just my savoury tooth that influenced my judgement.

And so I’m bake on the biscuit trail to try another simple biscuit recipe for the office, this time stem ginger shortbread – not as sweet as Recipe 27 and, having just eaten one, a lot closer to what I’m after! I wonder if they’ll still bring in the ladies from Quality…

This makes 20 biscuits.

Ingredients:

200g butter or margarine	½ teaspoon ground ginger
100g caster sugar (plus a bit for sprinkling)	Healthy pinch of salt
260g plain flour	50g chopped stem ginger
40g rice flour or corn flour	1-2 greased baking sheets

Put the soft butter into a mixing bowl and beat it until soft and creamy. Gradually beat in the sugar and continue until it’s light and fluffy.

Combine the flours, ground ginger and salt and sift into the mixing bowl, gently mixing it all up. Add the chopped ginger and then mix it all together with your hands, ensuring you get a nice mixed up dough. Form the dough into a 20-25cm long sausage and wrap in cling film. Transfer this to the fridge for 20-30 minutes to firm up a bit.

Heat the oven to 170⁰C. Unwrap your shortbread sausage and, with a sharp knife, cut into 20 rounds. Pop them on the baking sheets with a little space between them and bake for 20 minutes until firm, but not so that they colour; maybe just to a little bit golden just on the edge of the edges.

Once out the oven, sprinkle with sugar and then leave on the trays to cool a little and ten, when firmer, transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Store these and eat within a week [if they last that long…].

Today’s learning:

You can take out the ginger and stem ginger and replace with chopped pistachio nuts to get pistachio shortbread – now that one does sound like a winner!

Recipe adapted from: BBC Books (2011). The Great British Bake Off: How to Bake. London: Random House.

Pic to the left: my desk at work with one of the little shortbreads...