Almond Short Bread

One author that ruled my childhood was Enid Blyton. I dreamt of going to boarding school, getting care packages, having midnight feasts with friends and learning french. Malory Towers and St.Clare's were so amazing and made my life so enjoyable as a kid. It exposed me to various kinds of food that existed in some part of the world and made me wish to taste them some day.

Thanks to it that my sister was a big Enid Blyton fan and we came up with the idea of having a candle light feast with out friend and neighbour Devi.We set our plan in motion and had our first feast at her balcony and ate idli's and tomato chutney with lemonade during the quarterly break and had vatha kohazmbu for the half yearly break at my place. For the annual candle light feast we made our sister cook peas masala, chapathi, custard and refrigerator cake and asked another friend to join us and had it in our balcony with candles. Sure its no match to the food in mid night feast but, we did create the effect by eating what we could find in our household and with candles.

Upper Fourth at Malory Towers, Chapter 11 : A Day Out, pg. 76,

"There were tongue sandwiches with lettuce, hard-boiled eggs to eat with bread and butter, great chunks of new-made cream cheese, potted meat, ripe tomatoes grown in Mrs. Lucy's brother's greenhouse, gingerbread cake fresh from the oven, shortbread, a great fruit cake with almonds crowning the top, biscuits of all kinds and six jam sandwiches!"

( Speacial thanks to Nethra Raman for helping me with the research on the material)

Bhag's blog " This book makes me cook" food event made me re live these wonderful memories and inspired me to make something that they had at the midnight feast. I decided on the shortbread and liked this recipe from Joy of Baking. It was perfect because I wanted to use up my almond meal that had been sitting in my pantry.

Please click on the link to get to the original recipe Almond Shortcake Cookie. I changed the ingredient proportions and made it into heart shaped cookies because I wanted to make them fast. The total time in the preparation of this cookie is 35 minutes from start to finish.

Gadgets:

Mixer
Bowl
Baking tray
Wax paper/parchment paper
Rolling pin
Heart shaped cookie cutter
Spatula
Mixing spoon

Ingredients:

Rice Flour - 2 Tbsp
Almond Meal - 1 1/2 cups
All Purpose Flour/Maida- 1/3 cup
Sugar - 1/2 cup
Butter - 1 stick/1/2 cup
Vanilla essence - 1 tsp
Granulated sugar - 1 Tbsp

Preparation:

1. In a bowl beat the butter and sugar until they are smooth and well blended about 2 minutes. Add Vanilla essence and blend that in.

2. Add APF, Almond Meal, Rice Flour and mix well.

3. Put the dough in a cling wrap and store it in the fridge to get the butter to cool for 15 mins.

4. Preheat the oven to 300 degree F.

5.Place a parchment paper and place the cooled dough. Cover the dough with another parchment paper on the top and with a rolling pin roll out the dough into the 1/4 inch thickness.

6.Using a heart shaped cookie cutter cut out hearts and place them on the baking tray lined with parchment paper.

7. Bake for 14 minutes.But like we do with all cookies bake the cookie for 7 minutes and turn the tray around so that the cookies in the front goes to the back and that way they would all bake evenly.

8. Enjoy this short bread with a warm cup of tea like I just did. Something healthy and I think if you have allergy problems you can prepare the same without any all purpose flour. I will do that the next time and report on it.