Sometimes, in an internet-land where combo recipes are the done thing (you know, cakes topped with macarons, brownies stuffed with chocolate bars and cookie dough, cookies filled with Nutella and topped with glaze…the list goes on), there’s something lovely about returning to a basic recipe. One with no more than five ingredients (three, really, if you exclude the chocolate and lemon zest for good old fashioned plain shortbread). About digging out an old recipe book of your Grandma’s (a dog-eared copy of Delia’s Classic collection), flipping to one of the pages she’d marked out in the back of the book as being worth making, and diving straight in armed with a wooden spoon and a block of room-temperature butter.

Shortbread’s been my sweet treat of choice, lately. There’s something about those little buttery rounds I can’t get enough of! The obsession began over Christmas, when my Mum gave us a pack of biscuits that we demolished during the few days between Christmas and New Year when we never seem to have any food in the house. We’ve somehow had at least one tin on the go ever since then, and so it seemed only right I had a go at baking my own. They really are the simplest biscuits in the world to put together- so much so that I whipped up two batches back to back in no time at all. The flavour combination I’ve made here (lemon + dark chocolate) is a lovely one, but be as creative as you fancy. I saved half of the dough and sprinkled them generously with caster sugar as soon as they came out of the oven instead of dipping them in chocolate, and since they’re such a plain base, you can pretty much add in anything you fancy.

But to be honest, tasty though the dark chocolate and lemon zest flavour combination is, my favourites are the plain ones.

Sometimes, simplicity is where it’s at.

I find these actually taste better after they’ve been cooled a good couple of hours, as opposed to being eaten straight from the oven. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but the texture’s just better after an hour or two’s rest.

{Makes approx .15 biscuits.}
Ingredients ::
220g soft, unsalted butter
100g caster sugar
350g plain flour

1 lemon, finely zested
100g 70% dark chocolate

- Beat the butter by with a wooden spoon until creamy, then add in the caster sugar and beat again to combine. 

- Sift in the flour, grate in lemon zest to taste, and stir as much as possible using the spoon and then finish off bringing the mixture together using your hands. Don’t overwork the dough- stop kneading just as soon as it comes together.

- Dust a surface with caster sugar and roll out the dough to between 1/2cm-1cm thick, and cut out rounds using a 3inch fluted cutter. Transfer the biscuits to a lightly greased baking tray, and place into the top of an oven preheated to 150 degrees celsius.

- Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the biscuits are just set and are a light golden colour. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. {Sprinkle over a dusting of caster sugar whilst the biscuits are still warm, if you don’t fancy adding the chocolate}.

- Dip the cooled biscuits in melted dark chocolate, and grate over a small amount of lemon zest before the chocolate is set. They’ll keep a good couple of days in an airtight tin, if they last that long.

Tag me up if you have a go at making them! I’m @ciderwithrosieb on Twitter and ‘ciderwithrosieblog’ on Instagram :)