Austrian Raspberry Shortbread

This beautiful shortbread recipe is brought to you once again by the lovely Smitten Kitchen and is just too delicious not to try. If you’re on a diet, you’re going to want to break it for this mini delight!

Ingredients

500g, unsalted butter slightly softened
4 egg yolks
2 cups sugar
4 cups self-rasing flour
1 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Optional additions: 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1 teaspoon lemon zest (I used a good serving of vanilla extract – a delicious addition)
1 cup raspberry jam, at room temperature
1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar (AKA icing sugar for those cooking-challeneged but trying like myself)

Steps

1. Cream the butter in a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment (or using a hand mixer) until soft and fluffy. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

2. Mix the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt together. Add to the butter and egg yolk mixture and mix just until incorporated and the dough starts to come together. Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and form into two balls. Wrap each ball in plastic wrap and freeze at least 2 hours or overnight. (Depending on how well your freezer freezes, 2 hours should be plenty!) 

3. Heat the oven to 180 degrees celsius.

4. Remove one ball of dough from the freezer and coarsely grate it into the bottom of a 9×13-inch pan. Make sure the surface is covered evenly with shreds of dough.

5. With a piping bag with a wide tip or a zip-lock bag with the corner cut off, squeeze the jam over the surface as evenly as possible, to within 1/2 inch of the edge all the way around. Remove the remaining dough from the freezer and coarsely grate it over the entire surface.

6. Bake until lightly golden brown and the center no longer wiggles, 50 to 60 minutes. As soon as the shortbread comes out of the oven, dust with confectioners’ sugar.

7. Cool on a wire rack, then cut in the pan with a serrated knife. I find that for this an all bar cookies, chilling the pan in the fridge makes it a lot easier to get clean cuts.

THE VERDICT: 

As you can see, they turned out absolutely perfectly. Ok, that’s a bit of a lie as you didn’t see how many shots I had to take to make sure the shortbread looked as aesthetically pleasing to match its scrumptious taste. Unfortunately, the middle of the shortbread when I took it out of the oven after 50minutes was still a little sunken, however I felt that the goods were getting a little too “tanned” so they had to come out.They still tasted amazing, however they fell apart quite easily.

So that’s the negative stuff out the way. The good and most important factor was that they tasted absolutely delicious. If you’re not one who likes a lot of sweetness, I’d advise to either ditch the vanilla essence in the dough making stage or just suck it up and take the sugary hit. The outside is crusty and sweet, the inside a beautifully dense and thick cake of goodness. The raspberry jam compliments the delicate taste of the shortbread beautifully but again, if you don’t have much of a sweet tooth you could perhaps put less than a cup of jam.

All in all, these delicious raspberry shortbread creations are like a gift from up above. They’re perfect afternoon treats with tea, and a fantastic addition to any BBQ or as an idea to take to someone’s house when you’re told ‘not to bring a thing.’

N.B. Again, I’ve made adjustments to Smitten Kitchen’s recipe based on my own experience (and have also converted to measurements us Aussies understand ;) )

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