Scottish Shortbread for #RandomRecipe Tea Time Treats

Once again, I am taking part in the #RandomRecipe challenge! This month Belleau Kitchen has gotten together with two other fellow food bloggers, Karen and Kate to come up with our theme for this month’s challenge: Tea Time Treats.  So rather than choosing a random recipe from ALL of my cookbooks, I was allowed to choose from the ones I thought would best exemplify tea time food, which for me means British food.  (If I read the instructions correctly.)  Top of my list were Elizabeth David, Delia Smith, Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver and their many cookbooks in my collection.  I was delighted when my random choice fell on Jamie’s Great Britain and then, coup of all coups, it opened to Scottish Shortbread.  I was sort of hoping for a savory treat because, as many of you know, I am not a big sweet eater but these biscuits are deliciously simple (only four ingredients!) and not too sweet.  I am, on the other hand, a lover of all things British, including my dear husband, so this challenge was right up my street, as they say on the small island.

Ingredients
1.6 cups or 7 oz (by weight) or 200g flour
Scant 1/4 cup or 50g sugar, plus extra for sprinkling over
Generous 1/2 cup or 125g unsalted butter
1/8 teaspoon salt (This was my addition, because even sweet things need some salt.)

Method
Preheat the oven to 325°F or 170°C.

Mix the flour, sugar and salt together in a mixing bowl.

Cut your butter into pieces and, using a pastry blender, mix it into the dry ingredients.

Once it is almost all mixed in, use your thumb and fingers to make sure that all the lumps of butter are gone.  Jamie says, “Don’t knead it, you just want to pat it down flat,” but I am here to tell you that this was so crumbly that you couldn’t knead it if you wanted to.

Push the crumbs together in the side of the bowl and scrape the resulting lump out onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Press it into a flat circle using two hands, one on the outside and one pressing the dough down and out towards your other hand.  Keep going around the circle until it is compact and flat all over.  I couldn't  take a photo with both hands in place, so just put the next two photos together and you'll get the idea.

Left hand holding the side in.

Right hand pressing it flat and pushing the side out.

If it breaks apart, just press it back together but remember, the less you work the dough the lighter and flakier the shortbread will be.

I also crimped the edges, as you can see, but the decorative edge really doesn't show up once baked so just do it if you feel like it.

Gently score lines on the shortbread with a sharp knife, then make some shallow decorative indentations with the tines of a fork.

 Sprinkle over some sugar, then pop the baking sheet into the oven and cook for 20-30 minutes.

Keep an eye on it - you want a lovely light golden color.  Mine turned out a little darker than I would have liked, but it was still delicious.  Truly, shortbread is one of the great mysteries of baking. Without leavening of any kind, these delectable treats do turn out light and flakey somehow.  It must be magic.

When it comes out of the oven, cool for just a minute or two and then, using a sharp thin knife, cut through where you scored the shortbread.   After scoring and baking, you are supposed to be able to snap these apart but that has never worked for me and I end up with irregular shortbread and a small pile of crumbs.

Leave to cool completely and then separate the pieces.  Store any leftover shortbread in an airtight container.  If you have a lovely thistle teapot given to you by a dear Scottish friend, this would be the appropriate time to bring it out.  Shortbread is best served with a nice hot cuppa.

Enjoy!

Update:  A couple of days after I made the shortbread, I had guests for dinner.  Taking the simple shortbread a step farther, I dressed it up and called it dessert: a wedge of shortbread, two scoops of store-bought vanilla praline ice cream, all drizzled with warm homemade salted caramel sauce.

To see what other tea time treats have been created for this challenge, please follow these links and scroll to the bottom on their websites:

Belleau Kitchen and Lavender and Lovage 

Apricot Pumpkin Muffins #MuffinMonday

The news is getting out so I might as well tell the world here.  It hasn’t even been a year and we are moving again!  We have loved Cairo and would happily stay here for many more years but my dear husband got a job offer that was too good to refuse and we are loading up the camels and heading to Dubai.

We travel light!  Yeah. Right.  Don't I wish!

The United Arab Emirates was our very first long term (read: more than just a few months) posting after we got married so it sort of feels like coming home.  That said, I am fully expecting not to recognize anything though because, by all accounts, Dubai has grown and changed enormously, even in the last few years.  I have been house hunting online today and reading all about the marvelous grocery stores and, as much as I will miss Cairo and the people here (and our lovely home) I am starting to get just a little excited about the move.  Kind of like being pregnant and excited about the baby, while dreading the actual labor, which is the painful process of packing and unpacking in this analogy.  I hate moving.  But I love baking muffins.  So let’s just do that today instead.

This week's muffins are from Celebrating Quick Breads and Pastries and were originally an orange pumpkin muffin with some walnuts for topping.  You know I had to put some walnuts inside as well and I decided that chewy bits of apricot would be better than orange.  I don’t know if I am right about better, but they sure were delicious.

Ingredients for about 16 muffins
1 1/2 cups or 190g flour
3/4 cup or 170g sugar
1/2 cup or 100g firmly packed brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup or 50g walnuts plus extra walnut halves for garnish before baking
8 dried apricots
1 egg
1/4 cup or 60ml canola oil
1 1/2 cups or 180ml canned pumpkin

Method
Grease your muffin pans or line with paper baking cups.  Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C.

In a small bowl, combine flour, brown sugar, sugar, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Chop your apricots and walnuts and add them to the dry ingredients.

Use a couple of forks or your fingers to separate the apricot pieces from each other if they are sticking together.

In a large bowl, combine the eggs and oil with the pumpkin.   Beat until well blended.

Fold the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.

Spoon or scoop the batter into prepared pans filling each cup two thirds full.  Top each with half a walnut.

Bake in your preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Remove from pans, serve warm or cool on wire rack.

Now wasn’t that more fun than moving house?!

Enjoy!

Manousah or Arabic Pizza for Cooked in Translation

Almost every ancient country or ethnic group has a flatbread, whether baked in an oven or cooked on the top of a griddle.  I might even go so far as to say they all do, but then I would have to do some research before posting this.  So let’s just agree that almost all do.  (Right off the top of my head, I give you tortillas from Mexico, matzo from Israel, injera from Ethiopia and naan from India.)  Normally I would be all about the researching but, frankly, I have spent many of my waking hours this past last week responding to concerned friends and family who are worried about our safety here in Cairo.  Let’s just get it out there:  WE ARE FINE!  The demonstrations all over the region and especially the tragic murders in Libya are extremely upsetting but, as for Cairo, aside from protestors in Tahrir Square, the rest of the city is calm and peaceful and we are in no danger whatsoever.  I continue to pray for total peace in the region.  

Now back to our regularly scheduled Cooked in Translation post where the recipe prompt is pizza.  The challenge set this month by our host, Paola, over at Italian in the Midwest is to recreate pizza from a new cultural or ethnic perspective.  Which is what brought me to flatbreads in the first place.  Because what is pizza but an oven-baked flatbread traditionally topped with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and possibly a few other choice ingredients?  I decided to give this a Middle Eastern spin, making my crust with toasted cumin and topping it with roasted eggplant paste made with spices and garlic and tahini – that is to say, baba ganoush – and then adding feta and black olives and roasted red peppers.  Egypt does indeed have its own pizza, called manousah, but I couldn’t find one that used baba ganoush as a sauce.  I did find recipes with yogurt and feta and even tomato sauce or honey.  So, this baby is authentic nowhere but that doesn’t stop it from being delicious! 

Ingredients for two pizzas

For the crust:

4 1/2 cups flour

1/4 oz or 7g dried yeast (I used one envelope of Fleischmann’s Rapid Rise.)

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon whole cumin

For the baba ganoush:

1 large or 2 medium eggplants

1/4 cup or 60ml tahini

3 garlic cloves

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

Sea salt, to taste

For the additional toppings:

7 oz or 200g feta (I used sheep’s milk feta but your favorite will do nicely.)

1 large red bell pepper

1 teaspoon ground sumac 

1/4 cup black olives (about 14-16) or more if you love them

Olive oil

Good handful fresh flat-leaf parsley

Method

First we will make the dough so it has time to rise. 

Toast your cumin seeds in a dry non-stick skillet over a medium fire.  Keep shaking them so they don’t burn.  This takes just a few minutes.  Set aside.

Put about half of your flour in the mixing bowl and add the yeast, salt and 1 1/2 cups or 355ml very warm water. 

Mix on low until all of the water is incorporated and you have a very thin batter.   Scrape down the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula.  Beat on medium for two minutes.

Add in the rest of your flour a little at a time, along with the toasted cumin, switching to the bread hook, if you have one, when the dough gets too stiff for the regular beater/s.  If you don’t have a bread hook, knead the dough by hand until it is stretchy and smooth. 

Drizzle a little olive oil into the bowl and roll the dough into a ball and turn it around in the oil.  Cover and set aside in a warm place to rise.

Now on to the baba ganoush. 

Preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C.   Roast the eggplant on the stove top if you have a gas stove or on a barbecue pit.  I know this looks scary, but an Indian friend taught me this method and she swore by it.  It really does work!

You want to keep turning the eggplant until all sides are charred and the skin is cracking. 

Place your eggplants in a pan in the preheated oven.  Bake for 20-30 minutes or until the eggplants are soft.

 Turn the eggplants over halfway through.

Roast your red bell pepper on the stove or barbecue pit, just as you did the eggplant.   When it is blackened all over, pop it in a plastic bag and tie a knot.  (The steam will help loosen the skin and make it easy just to slide off.)   Set aside.

Meanwhile, mince your garlic and roughly chop your parsley and set them aside. 

When the eggplants are soft, remove them from the oven and transfer them to a plate  Allow them to cool enough to handle.  Turn the oven up so it can preheat to 400°F or 200°C.

Peel the eggplants and cut the stem end off.  Put the flesh in a medium bowl and mash with a fork.

Add in the rest of the baba ganoush ingredients.  Stir well.  Set aside.

By now your dough should have almost doubled.  Punch it down and divide into two equal halves.  (These ingredients will make two pizzas, probably with baba ganoush leftover, if you don’t spread it on too thickly.)

Oil a baking pan and stretch one piece of the dough out by hand - as thin or thick as you like it.  We prefer thin to thick.  And remember that it will rise some more as it bakes. 

Pop this in the oven for about eight minutes.  The goal is to cook the bottom enough so that the crust slides around easily on the baking pan.

While the crust bakes, remove the skin from the roasted bell pepper.  Cut the stem end off, remove the seeds and cut it into strips.  Drain the olives of any liquid and dry them off.

Crumble your feta with a knife or fork.

Remove the crust from the oven and top with some baba ganoush and half of the feta, olives and bell pepper.  Sprinkle with half of the sumac and drizzle on some olive oil.

Slide the pizza into the oven, off of the pan and directly onto the oven rack or shelf.  Bake until the crust is golden brown and the feta is melted, about 15 more minutes.

Remove from the oven by reversing the process, grabbing the edge of the pizza crust and sliding it back on the baking tray.

Top with chopped parsley and drizzle on a little olive oil.  (Repeat the whole process for the second pizza.)

I like to put my pizza on a wooden cutting board at this point because I think the wood absorbs some of the steam and keeps the bottom from losing its crunch.  But you can leave it in the pan, if you’d like.  Cut into slices and serve.

Enjoy!

If you would like to learn more about Cooked in Translation, you can find the instructions to join here at The German Foodie. 

To check out the other delicious Cooked in Translation pizza posts, follow these links.