Like most of the rest of Ireland at the moment I am going stir crazy, having being mostly confined to the house for the last 3 days. I did leave the house on Thursday to feed the canal pigeons, which made me smile as it was a magical snowy day!
Look at them there, delighted with the Flahavans!!
Friday came and The Chap and I tried the same excursion to find the paths were slightly more terrifying and the magical bright snow had turned to brownish compacted snow so while the pigeons did get fed I arrived home ready for some home comforts.
The travesty in all of this is that before the snow came I had a work related baking marathon and used all of my flour. Dun Dun Duuuuhhhh!!!! The silver lining came from a successful experiment with spelt flour. Leading me to:
Spelt, Coconut & Pecan Shortbread
These came out more like the texture of a hobnob than a regular crumbly shortbread, they have a lovely snap and crumbly nutty goodness. Plus I’m pretty sure spelt flour is like one of your five a day or something so you can feel less guilty about eating several in a row.
Ingredients:
- 175g butter, at room temperature
- 175g sugar
- 200g spelt flour (or use regular but the texture will be softer I’d imagine)
- 80g pecans/walnuts, toasted and chopped
- 60g dessicated coconut, toasted
Method:
- Preheat oven to 170c
- In a stand mixer or with an electric mixer by hand cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy
- Add in the flour and mix on low speed until it just comes together as a dough, like this:
- Add the nuts and coconut and mix until just combined
- Dump the mixture into an 8″ (23cm) square baking pan and pat it out flat with your hands
- Prick all over with a fork and then score into about 18 pieces
- Bake for approx 50mins to 1 hr until golden
- While it’s still warm, cut down along the lines you made previously
- Let cool in the tin and then the slices should come out fairly easily
- Serve with copious amounts of tea while staring at the walls going nuts (see what I did there?!!)
