Christmas deserves something extra special. So a shortbread biscuit flavoured with clementines, so readily associated with that time of year, are just perfect. They taste great and have that special shortbread crunch.
Although I made shortbread just a few weeks ago I decided that a slight variation, adding the zest from some clementines, would make a good last minute bake for Christmas.
Clementines, mandarins and satusumas are traditional at Christmas, at least in the UK, so adding that light flavour to some shortbread seemed like a very good idea.
Using the same recipe as last time, but a different pan for baking, gave me slightly thinner wedges of shortbread. I used a 9 inch/23cm flan tin for this version and it worked very well indeed.
The shortbread baked very well indeed and had such a good flavour. The butteriness of the traditional shortbread was present and then the added flavour from the zest of the clementines really added a new level to this very simple recipe.
I baked mine for an hour, and that gave me a great texture, but each oven is different, so a little longer (or even shorter) may be required. When the top has coloured nicely the shortbread should be ready.
This recipe relies heavily on my Shortbread post.
Clementine Shortbread for Christmas – video
Ingredients:
- 175g(1 cup + 2 tbps) plain flour, based on scooping packed flour into a 250ml cup
- 75g(6 tbsp) golden caster sugar(or ordinary caster sugar, or granulated sugar)
- 75g(1/2 cup – 1 tbsp)fine semolina(or ground rice)
- 175g(12 1/2 tbsp) butter (mine was out of the fridge for one hour before use).
- zest from three clementines
- 1 tbsp ice cold water(if needed to pull the dough together.
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 150C/300F.
- Line a 9 inch flan tin or an inch sandwich/cake tin with parchment paper(loose bottomed is best for ease of serving)
- Mix the flour, semolina, zest and sugar together, in a large bowl.
- Add the butter and toss to coat it.
- Rub the butter into the dry ingredients until you achieve a breadcrumb-like texture( I did this in the processor bowl of my immersion blender until it started to clump then turned it out into a large bowl).
- Squeeze the mixture together repeatedly until it all comes together into a nice soft dough. If necessary add a little drop of water to help the process.
- Form the dough into a single large piece and place into the cake tin.
- Use your fist to press the dough all over the base of the cake tin, until it is covered.
- User the back of a spoon to level the dough to a fairly even thickness, and to smooth the top.
- Prick all over the dough with a fork.
- Bake in the oven for between 60 and 75 minutes, until the shortbread has taken on a nice golden colour.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes.
- Cut the shortbread, still in the cake tin, into 4 quarters.
- Cut each quarter into 3 equal sized wedges.
- Allow to cool completely before removing from the cake tin and serving, or storing in an airtight container.