Ewan MacGregor wearing our clan colors. Royal is my race, ladies.
Prep and Cook time: 1 hour
Rob Roy is more than just a cocktail.
If you are Scottish, you have learned that you are a direct descendant of Rob Roy. Rob Roy MacGregor—we have to be distant cousins, at least. Everyone seems to be a direct descendant of this guy…I don’t quite know how it’s occurred, but every Scottish genealogy report I have seen says anyone with of this heritage is related to Rob Roy.
It doesn’t seem quite possible.
Kind of got around, didn’t he? What a manwhore.
Back when a hard winter effected what we did we throw away parts in our cooking and baking, the Scots discovered a beauty of a dessert. It involves about 3 ingredients that when, baked properly, tastes rich and butterscotch-y, flaky and dense. You will want to eat it till you’re sick.
Its Scottish Shortbread. Which I’m sure Rob Roy invented or something like that…
Like all good baking, there’s a level of chemistry involved. But unlike any baking you’ve done with scones or other delicate dough, shortbread likes to be manhandled. Get rough with shortbread. Kneed it well. Roll it out even. Bounce it around on the moors, lads. It will never get tough and will respond to your touch as if you’re hands were magic.
It must be the Rob Roy in us all.
Ingredients:
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
½ cup sugar
1 tsp real vanilla
2 ½ cups flour, sifted
Tiny pinch of salt
Cream the butter and sugar. Add vanilla. Sift in flour and add salt. Mix well with your hands. When you start you will ask yourself, how can this bowl of dry sand come together? Only the warmth of your hands will bring this together. When all the flour is well mixed, make a large disc of the dough and place it on an unfloured surface. Flatten it out as much as possible—it will eventually be about the size of the 9 x 12 cookie sheet you bake it on with about a ½ inch thickness. You may want to use an unfloured rolling pin as well to ensure even thickness throughout.
Lay parchment paper on your cookies sheet and rub the butter wrappers on it for additional flavor. After the shortbread is on the cookie sheet, poke it all over with a fork, as you would a pie crust.
Bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 300 (fan the door a few times to reduce the temperature quickly) and cook for an additional 40 minutes.
Remove for the oven and cut while hot. I usually cut it into squares and then half again so they are triangles.
how bizarre that you just posted this article on shortbread, when i asked your mother yesterday if she had any light to shed on why my shortbread always sticks to my lovely earthenware molds – we decided i would ask you!!
Oh, that’s funny! Everything happens as it should!
and OMG, that lovely young man in the kilt – and (i hope, i dream!) nothing else!!