Scottish Shortbread Christmas Edition

So Thankgiving came and went in the blink of an eye. I decided I was going to make some nice Thankgiving shortbreads in the holiday shapes as a gift for our dinner hosts. Alas that was not meant to be as every shop I went in to had not one thanksgiving shaped cookie cutter so in the end I decided I would preserve just in Chistmas theme instead! I think the last time I had made short bread was in school and I had grievously overlooked them. So I little hunting through the cook books and the lovely interweb! I found myself a good combination for my recipe.

Ingredients:

225g softened butter

110g caster sugar plus extra for dusting

225g all purpose flour

110g corn flour/corn starch 

Pinch of salt

You will also need a couple of sheets of baking parchment, a rolling pin and rather cookie cutters or a round tin depending what you want.

Method:

Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl until light and fluffy. I recommend using an electric whisk to save your arm muscles.

Sift in the flour and the corn flour with the salt and mix into the butter/sugar mixture.

Tip the mixture out onto a lightly flour surface and bring together while kneading to a soft dough. (It will more then likely be extremely flaky and likely to fall apart this is a good thing don't worry)

Using two pieces of baking parchment roll the dough out between them to about 1/2 an inch thickness.

Remove the top baking parchment and prick the dough all over with a fork. You can now cut the dough out into the shapes of your choice. 

Any dough you have left over you can re-roll out and cut too.

When moving the cut out shapes to the baking tray use a flat spatula and very gentle pick them up and move them over to prevent them from falling apart at this point.

Bake in a preheated oven at 170C for about 20 mins you want them to be a light golden brown.

Once then are cooked again using the spatula move them to a wire rack to cool and dust with caster sugar.

These really are super super tastey as they are but you can always vary the recipe up by dipping the finished cookies into chocolate. Adding chocolate chips to the recipe or dusting with a cinnamon sugar at the end. The choice is yours.

Enjoy Tara 

Home made Baileys

Well

After I decided a few weeks ago to clean my laptop up so I wiped back to factory settings after saving all of my important info into my hard drive. 

I figured I would remember all my passwords and such for the different sites I use. What I neglected to remember was that I hadn't written down the user name for this blog..... That has posed a problem for possibly two weeks now and eventually today I played the guessing game. After possibly an hour of trying to log into other people's accounts and a really old account I didn't even know I still had I found my username! My apologies to any other Tara Prendergasts out there I was not trying to hack your gmail accounts! 

Anyways now I have found my way here I should probably adjust this one to the married name so I find it easier in future. 

So today I am going to teach you about how to make your very own homemade Baileys. 

I never even knew that this was a possibility until myself and Rob stayed in a BnB near Oban in Scotland about a year and a half ago. It was a really lovely little place with big glass windows and beds that you seriously sank right into. I honestly think it may have been the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in. Anyways they had some really sweet little treats for us during our stay including complimentary homemade Baileys and the local whiskey. Hence how this post has now come to pass.

You may think this might be difficult but it is seriously one of the easiest recipes you can possibly try.

Ingredients:

1 cup Double cream(heavy/whipping) 

1&3/4 cups Whiskey

2 tbsp Chocolate syrup

1 tsp Instant coffee

1 can Condensed milk

1 tsp Vanilla extract 

Method:

Put all of the ingredients into a blender or your prefers mixing tool and whisk.

Whisk for 20 seconds for a nice light texture or whisk for up to 1 minute for a nice creamy texture. 

I prefer the ridiculously creamy if I'm honest.

This honestly is one of the tastiest Baileys you will ever try and it makes an excellent gift for friends when going to parties over the holidays. 

Enjoy Tara x