I know I need to find more exciting names for my blog posts but the excitement of GBBO is just too much. There's always that moment of panic halfway through the week (for me anyway) of what can I make???!!! It's a really serious condition. Again, for me. Sometimes I have too many options, sometimes I don't have any.
I always like trying different things. I also like to buy as few of the ingredients as possible so I had a look in my baking cupboard and low and behold: rose water. Rose water is one of those things where you buy a whole bottle to use a tiny bit in one recipe. I'm amazed at how quickly I've managed to work it into my desserts. It's a very Middle Eastern ingredient and I have horrible memories of being forced to drink it when I wasn't well - healing properties apparently.
Rose is an incredibly strong flavour so having it on it's own is risky. I know a Lebanese nun who likes to drink it diluted with lemonade. I like to add lots and lots of sugar to rose water so I really like it in desserts. Being biscuit week, I figured I'd mix it into my favourite type of biscuit: shortbread. Yum.
Rose and Almond Shortbread
250g plain flour
100g icing sugar
100g ground almonds
3 tsp rose water
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g butter, softened
Caster sugar for sprinkling
Add the flour, icing sugar and ground almonds to a mixing bowl and stir them all together. Add the rose water and vanilla extract the work in the butter. I used my hands because I got frustrated when everything stuck to the spoon I was using.
Once you have a good, firm but soft dough, roll it into a log about 4cm in diameter. Wrap the log in cling film and put it in the fridge for at least an hour.
Preheat an oven to 150 degrees C. Take the log out of the fridge and cut it into biscuit slices about 1cm thick. Lay them on a floured baking sheet leaving about 1cm between each biscuit so they have a bit of space to expand. Bake for 45 minutes. The colour won't be different, maybe a little tiny bit of golden along the rim of each biscuit but no more than that.
Enjoy with a nice cuppa or with ice cream - pistachio or caramel would be particularly nice with them.