Categories: Food & Drink

Macamadia Shortbreads for Christmas Day

Search online, you will notice that shortbreads are usually baked round in shape, rarely stamp out cookies or other shapes.

However nowadays, shortbreads are sold in many different type of shapes and sizes to meet the customers demands.

Besides plain flour and baking powder are used, the main ingredients that make the difference between shortbreads and cookies are corn flour and rice flour to produce a crumbly and soft texture.

Corn flour or corn starch is used in shortbread recipes in order to induce a crumbly and melt in the mouth cookie. In addition you will be surprise that although corn flour is white in color, once you mix it with water, it turns yellow instantly and sticky dough.

I decided to add in chopped roasted macadamia nuts because my son loves these nutritious nuts which is full of fibre and he was more keen of the crumbly, chewy cookies.

I was glad that he liked the Macadamia Shortbreads very much which I am sure that the outlook of the shortbreads had attracted his attention.

What I did was to roll the dough thinly, cut them into rectangular shapes that look alike finger biscuits and drizzle with melted dark chocolate with icing sugar.

Once the chocolate drizzle is set and harden, remember to chill the shortbreads into the fridge because it will melt when the chocolate started to melt.

Macadamia Shortbread Recipe

Ingredients:

250g butter-diced
100g brown sugar
80g icing sugar

Combined and sieved together:

230g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
50g rice flour
50g corn flour

Additional ingredients:

Roasted and chopped macadamia nuts
1 tsp icing sugar
100g dark chocolate-melted

Method of baking Macadamia Shortbread:

Preheat oven at 180C.
Prepare baking tray with baking sheet, lightly greased with a little butter so that shortbread would not stick onto it.
In a big mixing bowl, cream butter, brown sugar and icing sugar until light and fluffy.
You can either use a cake mixer or beat the batter by hand with a stainless steel fork.
Stir in sieved flour ingredients ( corn flour, rice flour, baking powder and plain flour)
Add in chopped roasted macadamia nuts, stir all ingredients until well combined.
It will form a soft dough.
Divide the dough into 2 portions for easy handling.
Wrap each dough with plastic cling wrap, chill in the fridge for 30min in order to firm them.
Roll out 1 portion of the chilled dough onto a floured flat surface.
The thickness should be around 0.5cm thick.
Cut the dough into rectangular shape, roughly finger cookie length.
Place the shortbread onto the greased baking tray.
Sprinkle the surface with a little sugar.
Bake in the oven for 20min under 180C or until golden browned.
Remove from the oven, leaving the shortbread on the tray, melt the dark chocolate, drizzle over the shortbread while it is hot.
Leave to cool or until the chocolate is set.
Store in airtight container , into the fridge because you don’t want the chocolate to melt and stick to other shortbreads.