Peppery Feta Shortbread

This is a simple savoury shortbread cookie or a cracker recipe using feta cheese and pepper.Shortbread is usually made from one part sugar,two parts butter and three parts flour.They are called so because of their crumbly texture due to high fat content.The fat content is from butter /shortening.The shortbread is usually baked at lower temperatures to prevent burning and can be white,brown or golden brown.Normally these are sweet as can be seen from the ingredients,but if you want a savoury cookie,you need to avoid sugar or any sweetner.I found a savoury shortbread recipe here and recreated it with little changes.

Ingredients:

All Purpose Flour: 2/3 cup
Yellow Cornmeal:1tbsp
Pepper: as per taste
Fennel(optional):very few
Feta Cheese: 6 tbsp or 3 oz
Unsalted Butter: 3 tbsp cold
Olive Oil: 2 tbsp

Preparation:

In a big bowl,combine flour,cornmeal and pepper and fennel if using or any other herb of your choice.Add in grated feta cheese and mix well.Add in cold butter cut into pieces.Combine well using hands pinching and fluffing butter pieces till the mix looks like coarse sand.Add in olive oil and combine the mix together to form dough.Shape the dough into log shape or any required shape and wrap the dough in a plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 1 hour atleast. Alternatively,you can freeze the dough if using later for upto 1 month and can thaw it in the fridge for a while before using.

Preheat the oven to 375F.Take out the chilled dough log and cut into slices and arrange these on a bakingsheet.Ungreased bakingsheet also works fine.Sprinkle more pepper on each slice and then bake for 8-10 minutes or more until the edges start browning a little.Mine took 12 minutes.But still it was light or almost white coloured,though the bottom was little brown.Allow it to cool for a few minutes in the baking sheet and then serve as such.Alternately you can cool them completely in a wire rack after a few minutes.These are very crumbly cookies and go well with soups or as a snack.

I have not added salt to the dough as feta is salty.Also you can also use softened butter as seen in some recipes.But generally cold butter is used in shortbread,so I went for it.Butter,especially cold butter prevents the formation of long gluten strands in flour which results in the crumbly sensitive texture.Those who like the salty feta cheese would fefinitely like these crackers.

These savoury shortbread are on their way to WTSIM:Sweet Savoury Swap event hosted this time by the creator herself-Jeanne,the CookSister.

Orange Thins

These are simple thin and crispy cookies made from white whole wheat flour ,butter and orange juice.They are similar to lace cookies but buttery and are easy to prepare.They are different from the normal cookie dough in that this does not have a dough,but it is like a batter.Since the recipe here in the EatingWell Magazine involved no eggs and seemed easy I went for it .I actually prefer oranges in such baked items rather than having it as such,though sometimes I end up doing both -eating them and adding them ;)

Ingredients:

White Whole Wheat Flour/Whole Wheat Pastry flour:1/2 cup
Sugar: 1/3 cup
Orange Zest: 1/2 tsp


Unsalted Butter: 4 tbsp (Melted)
Vanilla Extract: 2 tsp
Orange Juice: 2 tbsp

Preparation:

In a big bowl,mix the dry items ie white whole wheat flour,sugar and also orange zest.Blend well.Add in melted and little cooled butter,vanilla and orange juice and stir well to obtain a thick batter which looks like..

Now,white whole wheat flour is lighter in colour than regular whole wheat flour and is made from white wheat rather than the red wheat from which aatta /whole wheat is derived.If you do not have white wheat flour,sub it with whole wheat pastry flour or generally with white flour which makes the cookies all the more crisper (thats my assumption).

Preheat oven to 300F.Grease/line a baking sheet (avoid this for non stick- though for cleaning purposes lined is prefered).Take a table spoon of batter and plomp it on the baking sheet.Shape/spread it into a 2 and 1/2 " circle.I used a cookie cutter for that,feeel free to use anything or just your hands.Once done ,I also gave it a little design on top with the back of a fork which is completely optional and does not make any different to the cookie.Repeat with the remaining batter,but make sure the cookies are atleast 4 inches apart,as these spread.It looks like....

I went for just 4 cookies in my first batch.Bake at 300F in a preheated oven for 16-18 minutes until the edges are lightly browned.It came out like ...

The recipe went for rotating the sheet halway through.I did not for the simple reason that I forgot.So I allowed them to rest for about 3-5 minutes in the sheet which made them crisper and then using a pan cake turner,gently lifted them and cooled them completely on a wire rack/plate.The cookies were crisper,but a little chewy in the middle,but all the more perfect for me.So choose your preferred method while baking these.Also I went for 16 minutes.

These papery thin and buttery,orangy and crisp cookies are on their way to EatingClubVancouver for Weekend Wokking Event started by Wandering Chopsticks and the current theme is oranges