Shortbread Sweethearts

 

These are the third lot of yummy ‘bikkies’ I made from my favourite, buttery shortbread recipe.

Make every day or any day Valentine’s Day and show someone you love them with these cute little, ‘melt in your mouth’ shortbread hearts that have a burst of pink lemon curd in their centres…super easy and super yummy!

 

INGREDIENTS

225 g / 8 oz butter (at room temperature)
½ cup castor sugar
310 g / 11 oz standard flour (2 loosely packed cups)
155 g / 5 ½ oz cornflour (1 loosely packed cup)
¼ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup lemon curd
a few drops of food colouring

icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar) for dusting

Optional – 1 teaspoon vanilla paste (or the seeds scraped from 5 cm / 2 in of a vanilla bean).

 

Makes 20

 

Notes

• The amount of flour for this recipe is important hence why I also weighed it for you). If it’s slightly too much the dough will be too dry and crumbly to mould and if it’s too little, the dough will be too soft and sticky to roll out.
• As there are no eggs or milk in the recipe to bind it together the butter is what does it so it needs to be super soft.
• I usually use castor sugar in my baking as it helps to create a finer texture.

 

STEP BY STEP

For these, I use a 6 cm / 2 ½” W x 7 cm / 2 ¾” H heart-shaped cutter, so a cutter approx that size shouldn’t change the baking time.

Line two baking trays with non-stick baking paper and spray them with non-stick cooking spray (or lightly grease them with a ¼ teaspoon butter each).

As I mentioned the butter must be super soft for this recipe so cut the butter into small cubes and place it in the microwave and use the 50% / ½ power setting for 1 minute and then 30-second increments after that until it is (you don’t want any melty bits though, this will make the dough too soft and sticky).

Not all older microwaves have the half power function so another thing you can do when you need soft butter for creaming is this…

…Again, cut it into small cubes and then place it on a plate. Next, fill a heatproof bowl with boiling water and then straight away tip the water out. Place the hot, upturned bowl over the butter and leave it there for say 5 minutes for a small amount of butter and 10 for a larger amount, or simply until it reaches your desired softness!

• For this recipe, I left the bowl on until it had cooled down and the butter was perfect!

Next, in a medium-sized bowl, mix the flour, the cornflour and the salt together. Leave it aside.

Getting started on the actual shortbread, place the nicely softened butter, the castor sugar (and, if adding it, the vanilla) in a large bowl and…

…using an electric beater on a medium speed beat it for around 3 minutes or until it’s pale, light and creamy.

• If you are blessed enough to have one, using a bench mixer with the paddle is excellent for making shortbread, it always blends the drys into the creamed butter and sugar perfectly.

Scrape down the bowl and…

…add half of the dry ingredients.

Turn the beaters down to low and mix in the drys but only three-quarters of the way in.

Then add half of the remaining drys and…

…three-quarter mix them in too.

Once the last of the drys are mixed in, mould some of the dough in your hand. The heat from your hand should help it bind together reasonably easily.

• If it doesn’t mould together and feels too dry and crumbly (this can happen either from the butter no being soft enough or the drys being added too quickly) you can fix it by adding a little milk. Just add 1 teaspoon at a time (testing it after each addition) until it just begins to mould together and again, looks like large, soft crumbs but be careful you don’t add too much, you can’t come back from that.

Put the dough out onto a clean, dry bench.

Then using your hands mould the dough into a rough disc (to make it easier to roll out) and…

…then place it between two sheets of non-stick baking paper.

Then roll it out to a 1 – 1½ cm (around ½ in) thickness. 

Time to turn the oven on to 150°C fan bake oven or 175°C conventional oven, on bake, with a rack situated in the centre of the oven.

Now the fun part!..

Using the cookie cutter, cut out some rounds and then re-roll and re-cut some more, laying them out on the tray as you go, until you have 10. 

• I recommend placing biscuits/cookies on trays in uneven rows to let the heat and air circulate through allowing them to bake and brown more evenly.

Then use a ¼ teaspoon to scoop out a little half-round in the centre of each one, being careful not to go all the way through.

Now add one or two drops of food colouring to the lemon curd and mix it in well.

Then carefully place exactly ½ teaspoon of lemon curd in each hole.

Place them in the oven and bake them for 25 minutes or until they have started to turn a light brown around the outsides and are also a light brown underneath.

Whilst waiting for those ones to bake, roll and cut out the next tray of 10 hearts.

Once baked, leave them on the tray for 5 minutes and then transfer them to a cooling rack.

Leave them on the rack until they have cooled down. and then if you like, dust them with icing sugar.

LOVE!!

It’s best to make sure the shortbread has 100% cooled down before placing in an airtight storage container or they’ll go soft super quick.

Keepin’ em fresh – As shortbread isn’t baked that long, they can soften quickly, (biscuits that are baked longer and cool down to become harder will keep longer) so keep them in a really good airtight container and also because they contain a lot of fat (butter) keep them away from any heat, including sunshine or the butter will turn rancid. Many will keep them for weeks but because mine aren’t baked that long I’m careful with them, so I like to eat them within a week but of course, they never, ever last that long!

 

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