If you`re going to have a biscuit have a good one!
All my best childhood memories revolve around food and memorable times with my family.
My first memory is trying to reach up for chocolate biscuits on the table when my Mum was having a 70s coffee morning. I managed to pull all the biscuits and a coffee pot on my head and ended up in the burns unit of our local hospital being shoved into an ice bath. I am glad to report the ice saved my chest from being scarred and coffee and chocolate biscuits are still my favourite things!
Food should be tempting and if you`re going to have a biscuit have a good one I say. When I was a young newly qualified teacher, I had a mountain shopper bike. That is a boys bike with a big girly basket on the front that I could fill with wine and chocolate every night on my way home from school. I once got knocked off the bike outside The spotted Cow, now a Chinese buffet near the Barbican centre in York, by a bin waggon. My red wine smashed and to any passers by it looked as though there had been alot of blood spilled...no , just two bottles of Shiraz. I was relieved that my chunky Kit Kats stayed intact and provided balm for my bruised bottom and hurt pride.
I used to live near the chocolate factory and every Monday as I cycled to Aqua aerobics I would literally get a lungfull of chocolate on my way. Those days I survived on a diet of Kit Kats and St. Moritz menthol cigarettes. Many of my family had worked at Rowntrees and used to get "solids" a perfect looking Kit Kat that was in fact solid chocolate that was a product of the trial runs of chocolate that flowed before every production line. Arrrr those days of wine and chocolate are no more and I would give anything to keep cycling to my Grandma`s house in Huntington and find her there.
She always had a pantry full of tins full of homemade cakes and biscuits. My auntie passed on the family shortbread recipe to me recently and it read like a love letter and tasted like pure love.
If you`re going to have a biscuit have a good one! Anything made with that much butter is just my cup of Earl grey ! I hope you make these for your family and pass the recipe on, they keep for ages in a tin but with my own family , for that to be the case I`ll definately have to hide the tin!!
I am going to take some to work tomorrow and I might just cycle there too...
Davo shortbread
4oz caster sugar
8oz butter
2oz ground rice, or semolina
10oz flour
Whizz it all up in a food mixer until it makes a ball of dough. Cut into 1/2 inch thick rounds or fingers. Bake in a 180 degrees oven for 20 mins or until golden and crisp. Sprinkle with caster sugar, eat with a nice cuppa and someone who you count as family . xxx
