Parmesan & Thyme Shortbread

After a splurge of baking sweet desserts P always suggests making something savoury, he doesn’t mind what it is he just likes anything savoury with pastry or dough so while making the Anzac biscuits last weekend I put together a batch of savoury shortbread as an experiment. It seemed to be a very successful one too, I tried one when they came out of the oven and that was the last one I saw! P ate them all.

I stuck with my basic shortbread recipe omitting the sugar and just baked the biscuits longer so they would be a little more crisp. It’s funny because it is one of those few recipes I still use in ounces to measure everything since it is an old family recipe from my Nan.

Ingredients

• 6 oz/170g Four
• 4 oz/113g Butter (soften but not melted)
• 50g parmesan cheese, grated
• handful of fresh thyme leaves

Method.

1. Preheat oven on bake (not fan bake) to 160 degrees centigrade and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.
2. Sift flour into bowl.
3. Add butter and rub into flour, season with salt & pepper.
4. Add the parmesan (keeping a little to sprinkle over the top of the biscuits) and thyme and keep rubbing ingredients together so it start to form bigger clumps.
5. Gently bring ingredients together to form dough. Do not over mix otherwise dough will become tough and biscuits will have a pastry texture instead of a shortbread texture.
6. Lay dough onto a large piece of cling film and wrap dough. Once wrapped roll dough to form a cylinder shape about 2 inch diametre (this will be the size of the biscuit diametre before cooked).
7. Put wrapped dough into fridge for 30 mintues.
8. Once dough is firm, remove from fridge and slice 1/2 inch thick rounds and place onto prepared baking tray.
9. Sprinkle the remaining parmesan on top of the biscuits.
10. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden on edges.
11. Cool on a wire rack then serve with additional cheese, dips or chutney.

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