Vanilla Shortbreads

It's definitely weird to not be spending all my time on revision; sometimes I sit there and think, what do I actually do with all my spare time?. But one benefit to all this free time is being able to bake.
It was a bit of a shock to discover that the last time I published any kind of food-related post was September. September? 

The other day, I found myself baking these vanilla shortbread biscuits - half taken from the Tanya Bakes recipe book and half made-up. I was originally going to make the Choc Chip Shortbread biscuits from this book, however this was short-lived when I couldn't actually find any chocolate chips - that's spontaneous baking for you, completely unprepared.

So here's my recipe for what I felt to be pretty good biscuits, considering it was completely hit-and-miss at the time. Although, the basic ingredients are proportional to the original recipe.

• 250g plain flour
• 75g caster sugar
• 175g butter
• 1tbsp milk
• 1tsp vanilla extract

and in a few experiments, I added:

• a sprinkle of chocolate flakes

Preheat the oven and either grease a baking tray or cover with greaseproof paper. 

Firstly, I weighed out and mixed together the butter, caster sugar and flour using my fingers, until the mixture resembled breadcrumbs. Then I began to mould the dough together to form a ball. I then used a tablespoon of milk in order to make the dough slightly sticker, which made it easier to mould it.

Because I wanted to make the biscuits thicker, I used a cookie cutter to get a basic size for each, but I then rolled this dough into a ball and flattened it by hand, before using a fork to create a basic pattern in the dough. I put these into the oven for 15-20 minutes, and voila!

As you can see, this is one of the easiest recipes out there, only requiring three main ingredients. I really enjoyed making these, especially because they were a solution to my boredom at the time!

If you want to see anymore recipes, make sure you let me know - I now have a lot more spare time on my hands than I had previously!

Lots of love,