Thursday 6 December 2012

Frugal Scottish Shortbread Recipe

FRUGAL SCOTTISH SHORTBREAD
170g plain flour
115g margarine
60g sugar
30g cornflour

Mix lightly to form a dough. If it's too crumbly, rub in a little more margarine.
Form into a round, approx 1cm thick
Place in a lightly greased baking tray or recycled foil dish and mark into 'pie slices'.
Bake for approx 25 mins at 170C

You can also roll this dough out and cut it into individual biscuits. Festive shapes are good, or smaller circles, marked into quarters. For these, I use an old tuna (or similar) can with top and bottom removed. (Make sure the edges are smooth.) Any little round, shallow tins make really great, frugal cooky cutters!

If baking as a single, large round, you can fork round the edges for that wavy effect and pierce the surface in a dot-to-dot pattern on each triangle. I just stab a few holes in them with the fork.

Your shortbread should stay pale in colour. Sprinkle with sugar as soon as it comes out of the oven - leave to cool for 10 minutes and then transfer it to a baking rack to cool properly. I've done mine double thickness for a bit of added luxury. :)

FRUGAL TIP
Always keep a stock of flour, margarine, oil, sugar, salt and yeast in your cupboards. These are basic essentials for so many recipes that, coupled with eggs, we'd not be able to easily live without them.

For long-standing readers, this is the same recipe featured in the 2012 Christmas frugal recipes, I thought I'd repost it after someone asked about it - hope it helps you save time in trying to find it.

Enjoy!

3 comments:

  1. need to make some myself soon.

    Gill in Canada

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love shortbread. I think it's great that something so simple can taste so good!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Extra frugal tip for the recipe (or any other requiring butter) - pasteurised, tinned margarine works just as well and costs 99p for 3 x 450g tins. I stocked up via ROSSPA.co.uk when they had it on special offer, but you can still get it from Approvedfood.co.uk

    ReplyDelete

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