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Cranberry White Chocolate
Shortbreads
have a wonderfully rich and buttery flavor and are bursting with
dried cranberries and chunks of white chocolate. While shortbreads can
be made in various shapes and sizes, we will follow tradition here and bake
them in a round shape and then
cut the round into wedges, called "petticoat tails". The name
"petticoat tails" refers to the shape of the shortbread wedges which look like
the bell-hoop
petticoats worn by court ladies in the 12th century.
Shortbread is made with just a few ingredients; butter,
sugar, and flour. So try to use a good quality butter,
either salted or unsalted. You can add vanilla extract to
the batter or even a small amount of almond extract. And
while I have added dried cranberries, you could use dried
cherries. For the chocolate chips, you can use white, semi
sweet, bittersweet, or milk.
Whenever you cut a round of shortbread into wedges, there
can be the problem of the tips of the shortbreads breaking off. Dorothy
Hartley in her lovely book "Food in England" tells us that "Every cook
knows how the pointed ends of cut cakes and biscuits break off - so, after
several centuries of broken tips, someone evolved the cure: they cut a
circle out of the centre before baking......". If you like you can follow
Dorothy Hartley's advice and cut out the center before baking. Or you
can think of all those broken tips of shortbread as the cook's treat.
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