Spelt Shortbread

For me, cooking and baking is a stress buster, it really helps me to keep my calm. A little while ago, I was really in a foul mood, so bad, that, my head was hurting me. I thought, if I don't do something, this bad day could turn into a very bad day. 

So, of course, I went into the kitchen. Took out the baking tray, whole wheat flour (aata), all purpose flour (maida), baking powder, sugar, oil and even butter (which I normally do not use much in my baking) but, then without doing anything, I left the kitchen, went to the study, turned on the computer, thought this would help. I started organising the desktop, deleting unwanted mails, when suddenly my eyes fell on an email from my friend with the subject "Shortbread". I opened it, read it, went to the kitchen and started making it. While making it, believe me, I did not for once think about what happened a while ago, and got busy making the shortbread.

Thanks to this good friend of mine, who gave me this recipe, I was back to normal that day. Oh, by the way, the smell that emanates from the oven, when this lovely shortbread is being baked, definitely made me very happy :-)

Ingredients

125 gram - spelt flour (you can also make it with maida instead of spelt flour)

50 gram - cornflour

15 gram - semolina (suji)

125 gram - butter unsalted at room temperature

70 gram - sugar

a pinch of salt

castor sugar (optional)

Method

1. Add the sugar and the butter to a bowl and mix well with your hands.
2. Add the semolina, cornflour, spelt flour (you can also use maida instead of spelt flour) and salt in another bowl and mix.
3. Add the flour mixture, a little at a time and mix in with the butter, by the end, you will get a soft dough. 
4. Put the dough in a small rectangular baking tray and press the dough, with the palm of your hand and level it using an inverted small flat botommed bowl or cup (I used a stainless stell bowl). Alternately, you can also roll out the dough using a rolling pin and transfer the rolled out dough on to a baking tray. (the former method is quicker and fuss-free)
5. Using a knife, cut to the size you wish to have. (My shortbread pieces were 2.5 cm wide and 5 cms long). Don't forget to prick the dough with a fork.
6. Bake in a preheated oven at 160 degrees C for 38-40 minutes. 
7. Let the tray rest in the oven for 2 minutes, take out the tray and immediately, cut again where you cut previously to seperate the biscuits and prevent breaking. 
8. Sprinkle a little castor sugar on the top of the shortbread and let it cool completely before storing it an air tight container. 

Enjoy!