“You get some shortbread! You get some shortbread! Everybody gets shortbread!”
Going into a shopping mall in December is something that should be avoided at all costs. You could visit one of these awesome Christmas markets around South Africa, but these easy foodie gifts are one of the best ways to make people happy without leaving the house. Shortbread, easy salted caramel and lemon cordial: make a batch, put it into jars with pretty ribbons, and your Christmas shopping is done.
Easy salted caramel
This recipe is courtesy of Sarah Graham, author of one of my favourite cookbooks, “bitten.” (Have a look at her awesome food blog here.) Salted Caramel can be enjoyed just as it is, unadorned and scooped greedily and hastily out of the jar. Or it can be used to turn ice cream into something utterly magnificent and teeny tartlets to things that all dessert dreams are made of. Either way, any sane person would be excited to receive a jar of this!
Ingredients
300g light brown or caster sugar
50g butter
200ml cream
1-2 tsp sea-salt flakes (fleur de sel) (to taste)
Method
1. Melt the sugar and butter in a heavy-based saucepan over medium–high heat, stirring gently from time to time.
2. Add the cream and salt, mix well and leave the sauce to simmer for another 4-5 minutes or until the mixture is silky smooth, has darkened in colour and has thickened. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside to cool.
Notes
Be careful when adding the cream as it will cause the mixture to bubble furiously.
To turn this into a luxurious pouring sauce, just use extra cream and the sauce will be thinner.
If your sauce starts to crystallize a little as it sets, this could mean that it either cooked too quickly or too slowly – difficult to monitor without a sugar thermometer. However it’s easily fixed, just re-heat the sauce for a couple of minutes before serving and the crystals will melt back into the sauce and it will be silky smooth again.
Shortbread
The golden rule of shortbread has been passed down through the generations from the pioneering Scottish grandmother who first tasted shortbread and said, “Sisters! Come, I am tasting the crunchiest stars.” This rule is the ratio of 3:2:1 for flour: butter: sugar, and nothing can go too wrong if you follow it. If you’re interested in the specifics of perfect shortbread, have a look at this exhaustive testing of recipes.
This recipe makes enough shortbread to gift to approximately everyone.
Ingredients
220 gm salted butter
100 gm sugar
300 gm flour
Method
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together. Do not get too invested in the idea of the Scottish grandmother who did this by hand: if she had a blender, she would have used it.
3. Sieve the flour and mix it in, just until the dough comes together. Then cover the bowl with cling-film and put it in the fridge for anywhere between 15 minutes and an hour.
4. Gently pat the dough out into roughly 1cm thickness, and cut it into your desired shapes.
4. Bake at 180 degrees celcius for about 20 minutes. This will depend on the size of your shapes. If you’re old-school, take it out before it browns – if not, leave it until the edges are slightly tinged with caramel.
Lemonade cordial
The gift of instant lemonade is a nifty one. Gift a pretty glass bottle of home-made lemon cordial, and the lucky recipient can dilute it with soda water whenever they need some instant refreshment. You can have a look at the lemonade recipe here.
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