shortbread Tag

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets

CRANBERRY VIENNESE SANDWICH CREAMS

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The crochet side-pate is from Dishes Only.

THEY ARE THE COOKIE-VERSION OF A FEEL-GOOD MOVIE, EMOTIONALLY EQUIVALENT TO A BOX OF GOLDEN TWIN-PUPPIES EACH HUGGING A HAPPY GIGGLE.

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This is what I’ve been busy with for the past 7 days, recreating Mark & Spencer’s Viennese raspberry sandwich creams.  What does that say about me, spending 84 hours scrutinizing a processed junk-food from a super chainstore, I don’t know.  But I had to make it.

If you ever had childhood experience of reaching into a tin-box, and sneaking one of those buttery nuggets of vanilla cookies into your mouth as your first memory of pure foodgasm, then I guess, you can sort of understand.  But this, this is better, upgraded.  You can either go to your nearest M&S to see for yourself, or you can stay here and do it at home.  But how I got here, however unexpectedly long it took, was no vanilla road.  Checking out all the trusted recipes that were already out there, which, affirmingly, were all very similar to one another, let’s just say that I thought it was gonna be easy.  If they all agreed on it, it must work fine, right?  Humppphhh…

I made my first batch last weekend.  Well, it did work fine… how do I put it… wonderfully just okay I guess.  Wonderful in the sense that, flavor-wise, it was exactly what Viennese cookies are supposed to taste like, fireworks of buttery crumbs exploding in a vanilla sky.  No doubt about that.  But just okay because, and maybe I was being obsessively anal about it but still, I had a major textural issue with them.  It was one thing to have cookies with so much butter that they “melt in my mouth”, but it was something else entirely when they could barely hold themselves together even under the slightest pressure of a finger.  Like, I was scared to touch them… like literally, they eroded on my fingers.  I mean, if that sounds like a “dat a problem?” to you, then great, but I might add that they also had a paste-like and almost glue-ish texture in the mouth that… I just couldn’t quite get over.

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11.04.2015
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In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets

LIDDED OATMEAL W/ CHOCOLATE GINGER SHORTBREAD

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18 INNOCENT YEARS OF UNSUSPECTEDLY CONSUMING THE SAME WEIRDNESS, CAN GROW INTO POWERFUL, LIFELONG BRAINWASHER

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WE are all cursed with weird, nonsensical foods that we’re obsessed with eating, for absolutely no other explanations but the mere fact that… we ate them growing up.  They were often times the legacy of our great mothers who one day, out of desperation, whipped it out of a dirty kitchen sink and thought she shall repeat, for however long until the day we broke free for college.  Beware, that on top of the obliviousness that such “foods” were not nearly considered legit one step out the front-doors, 18 innocent years of unsuspectedly consuming the same weirdness, can grow into a powerful, lifelong brainwasher.  Mommy-to-be should take note.

I have, about a mile-long-list of such things.  A list that should worth a new segment called, The Stuff I Eat When I’m By Myself (stay tuned).  And rest assured, it ain’t pretty.  But Jason, on the other hand, has but one, one single childhood nonsensical food-fetish that has long menaced his reasonable adult-life.  And that is, a congealed tub of dead-cold… stiffened cadaver of something, that once in its previous life, was perhaps a barely sweet, borderline-edible plain oatmeal.  Yes, laid bare… it’s gotta be cold.  It’s gotta be stiff.  It’s gotta… make no fucking sense.  Yuuum?… well to him it certainly is.  He could eat a whole tub of that shit…

So by my manipulative caring nature, I thought, for the second instalment of the shortbread-marathon I’m preparing for Food52, that this presents a perfect opportunity to redirect his relationship with dead oatmeals, into a more… socially acceptable scenario.  But first, speaking of shortbread cookie-doughs, I should point out how utterly amazed I was at how straightforward, fuss-free, versatile and most of all, failsafe they are – and for the same exact reasons, under-appreciated.  No confusing science behind baking powder/soda, nor is there any factors left to chances, I mean there’s none but one rule, just one simple rule to ensure you that at the end of a short amount of time, something crumbly and exceedingly buttery shall parade triumphantly out of your oven.  The rule being, a stern ratio between 2 parts solid fat (often butter) and 3 parts dry ingredients (could be a combination of various flours), by weight.  READ MORE

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11.07.2014
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