Rosemary shortbread

A few weeks ago after a trip to the picturesque sea side town North Berwick with my Mum, I got experimenting with shortbread recipes in the kitchen and I posted a cashew and hazelnut shortbread recipe. I had never really made much shortbread before. I was impressed how quick and easy it was. After the cashew and hazelnut, I started experimenting with different flavours and came up with these rosemary shortbread. They are incredibly light and crumbly. The rosemary isn’t overpowering as it’s tempered by the black pepper, sugar and salt, creating a warm gentle flavour. My taste team confessed they weren’t rosemary fans normally but enjoyed these shortbread a lot. I struggle to decide which shortbread I prefer, the cashew and hazelnut or the rosemary.

Making up the latest batch turned into a bit of a performance. I took some rosemary shortbread dough out of the freezer that I had made previously to roll out. Don’t do this, the rosemary had turned black in the freezer and lost it’s flavour. That dough went into the bin, or rather the food recycling bin. The next batch of shortbread came out of the oven the colour of treacle biscuits, not creamy shortbread. I had set the oven to the right temperature but forgotten to check the thermometer inside the oven. I can never trust my old oven’s settings. Inside the oven it was 20° too high and I was left with burnt shortbread.Now I had run out of fresh rosemary. I remembered that some weeks ago at a house with beautiful vegetables being grown in the front garden, there was a box of rosemary and sage tied to the gate with a note suggesting to help yourself. I popped my little one into the buggy and off we went. The box wasn’t there, but a man was tending to the vegetables in the garden. I told him I had seen the box and asked if he still had any excess rosemary? He kindly cut me some from a small plant, it was wonderfully fresh and young.I thanked him and as we walked home I smiled, feeling lucky to live with neighbours who were happy to donate herbs to perfect strangers. Back home it was time for little ones nap, so I put him down and got back to the kitchen to get the third batch of shortbread in the oven. This time it all went well, the rosemary was perfect, the oven the right temperature and out came creamy shortbread with lightly browned edges.

In case you want to experiment with different flavourings for your shortbread my rule of thumb for ingredients is:

2oz/50g butter
2oz/50g caster sugar
3oz/85g flour or ground nuts – I like to use half flour and half ground nuts
Caster sugar for rolling out the shortbread and sprinkling on top once they are cooked Additional flavourings – I’ve put rosemary and freshly ground peppers in the final recipe below, but you could add spices, nuts, chocolate, zest or other herbs.

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