Vanilla Shorties

I love shortbread and find it a wonderful base recipe for trying different flavours. It makes a lovely crisp little biscuit and is so simple and rewarding to make. The idea of adding vanilla is not new but making a biscuit with vanilla seeds vanilla sugar and then adding vanilla icing intrigued me greatly. A really intense vanilla flavour was the natural outcome and yet it remained delicate and not at all overwhelming. A perfect little bite and one I will repeat often. I found the recipe on a lovely blog by LisaRenee called 'Little Bits'. http://www.uniquelittlebits.com/ULB/Blog/Blog.html
The recipe was the same basic recipe I use for shortbread. It called for vanilla flavoured confectioner's sugar. I was unsure if this was our icing sugar or caster sugar although I have a feeling it is the former. I did not have vanilla flavoured icing sugar so I used the vanilla flavoured caster sugar I had. This is my version of the recipe.

Vanilla Shorties

225gms/8oz soft butter
100gms/4oz vanilla bean infused caster sugar
1 vanilla pod
225gms/8oz plain flour
100gms/4oz cornflour

Preheat oven to 150.C/300°F/Gas 2

Cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar and the seeds from one vanilla pod and beat until smooth.
Add the flour and cornflour and mix to a dough. Using your hands at the end to combine is the easiest option as it is quite crumby
Roll out until about 1/2 cm thick
Cut into shapes of your choice
Bake at for about 25 minutes (better to under bake then over bake), or until bottoms just begin to brown.
Cool for 5 minutes then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

When biscuits have cooled spread them with a thin layer of vanilla icing.

Vanilla Icing

225gms/8oz icing sugar sugar
2 tsp cream and 2 teasps milk combined
¼ teaspoon vanilla paste
Combine in a small bowl, adding more milk to reach desired consistency.

Makes about 24 biscuits

The oven temperature was a lot cooler than I would normally bake shortbread but LisaRene advised this to keep the shortbread pale. It worked very well and the biscuits were still lovely and crisp.