Playing Card Shortbread Cookies

Another one inspired by the Barefoot Contessa.
She had teeny weeny playing card cookie cutters!! I needed them.
Amazon had them.
Now I have them.
Aces!!

So- here's Ina's recipe. 
This isn't the page I originally used, but all her shortbread recipes are pretty much the same.
I can't find the page I actually used when making these, but what I *really* should have done was read the comments at the bottom...
That would have made things much easier. I make these mistakes so you don't have to!

"Ingredients

3/4 pound unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 1/2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt  (I used table salt. I just don't have that many salts in my kitchen)
Blackcurrant jam
Strawberry jam

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and 1 cup of sugar until they are just combined. Add the vanilla. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour and salt; then add them to the butter-and-sugar mixture. Mix on low speed until the dough starts to come together. Dump onto a surface dusted with flour and roll shape into a flat disk. Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes."

Now... things had already started going wrong for me. I'd left the butter out at room temp for 3 days in the hope of softening it sufficiently. It was soft, yes... but not enough!

I also didn't use a mixer. The original recipe stated that was optional. I don't use mixers much. It just means more washing up. So I didn't bother.

The butter and sugar creamed together all fine and dandy.

It was adding the flour that was tough. There's a lot of flour. I got it to the "just combined" step. I even dumped it out, like she suggested. But it was a crumbly pile of crumbs. Terrible... I had to knead it until it was soft enough to form a ball. Not at all what the recipe had in mind.

And then after chilling it for the 30 minutes, I had to knead it again to get it to roll out at all.

Not entirely sure what had gone wrong, but it seemed that lots of commenters had the same issue.

Some suggested we hadn't used enough butter, perhaps only using 3/4 cup rather than 3/4lb., but that wasn't the case.

Turns out in the video that was only available to the Americas, Ina pours everything into the mixer at once, and beats it for longer.

Any way. That's something to try another day. 3/4lb of butter doesn't come cheap!

So, by massively over working the dough I'd created tough cookies, which is just tough.

Onwards!

What was her next step? Oh yes. The rolling and cutting out.
You don't need instructions for that.
Roll it out. Cut it out. Put it on a tray. Easy.
(oh, and if you put the tray in the fridge for 15 minutes before baking you limit the spread of the cookies, and keep the edges sharper)

oooh, pretty!

And here they are baked - 20-25 mins until lightly golden brown. Don't worry if they're still soft; they continue to firm on the baking tray.

After about 10 minutes resting on the trays, transfer the biscuits to cooling racks.

hmmm. I really need a window on my oven door!

Match up tops and bottoms - and separate into two.

Spread jam on the bottoms - red jam for the hears and diamonds, black jam for the clubs and spades.

Sprinkle the tops with a generous amount of icing sugar (look - there's my icing sugar sprinkler!)
Don't forget to do this part before assembling, otherwise you cover the jam in sugar as well.

Put the tops on top of the bottoms (holding the biscuits by the edges so as not to disturb the sugar)

Et voila!!

Big ones, little ones!

These were actually better the next day. The cookies had absorbed some of the jammy juices and had softened up nicely.


You can buy the shaped cookie cutters here and presumably some other places...

Easy Apple Tart

Need a quick lazy pudding?

Take some rolled-puff pastry (I used left overs from the palmiers)
Cut into a circle.

 

Press and twist a slightly smaller cutter into the disc to make an indentation, but don't cut all the way through.
Place onto a lined baking sheet.


Slice a bramley apple very thinly, and arrange the slices on the pastry disc.

 

Sprinkle the apple layers with a mix of caster sugar, demerara sugar and cinnamon.

Add small chunks of butter to the top.

Bake at 200oC until the pastry is puffed and golden, and the apple is cooked through.

Palmiers

 

Palmiers - also known as Palm Trees, French Hearts and sometimes Elephant Ears (and, according to Wiki, Shoe-Soles and Glasses, but I doubt that...)

Take a sheet of puff pastry (yes... I cheated and used ready-rolled. Not even just ready-made! I had someone else roll it out for me!)

I decided to make three versions, so cut the sheet in three, length ways.

Sprinkle the work top with sugar, and lay the pastry into it. Press down firmly to stick the sugar to it. 

On one sheet I spread mincemeat (the largest, as I had lots of mince meat to use up...), on the second, chocolate spread, and on the final, a mix of cinnamon and demerara sugar.

The rolling bit - 

Start rolling the pastry from one end in a tight spiral, but only as far as the centre of the length. Then start rolling the other end to meet in the middle.

Brush the tiniest amount of water along the join where the rolls meet, just to seal them.

Place on a lined tray and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

Using a very sharp knife, cut the rolls into quarter inch slices, and place on a lined baking tray.

Bake in an oven at 190oC for 20mins or until flaky and golden!

Pretty pretty!

Notes -  

Mince meat - Very lumpy with all the fruit in it. Makes it hard to roll tight spirals. They unravelled in the oven. I didn't photograph them, they looked a bit sad. Tasted like mince pies though. 

Chocolate spread - I'd seen online that people thought chocolate spread might be a good idea - I was less than convinced, having cooked it in a toasted sandwich before. I know what happens to baked chocolate spread. It's not pretty... It didn't really work. It kind of separated and burnt! Perhaps grated chocolate mixed with sugar would be better.

Sugar & Cinnamon - worked perfectly - I even placed a slice of apple in the centre of each roll.

Other things that might work quite well -

Savory - green pesto, red pesto, parmesan. Mozerella might be quite fun in the middle...

Any other suggestions?

I shall have a play next time the ready roll puff is on offer!

Quiche

 

To start me off for the year, here's a post with some pictures of quiche. This has been sitting here for months being ignored. (The post... not the quiche. I ate that.)

There are two quiches. One Tomato, Basil and Mozerella. One Cheese, Bacon and Onion.

They're both shortcrust pastry - blind baked, and chilled before being filled with the ingredients, and topped with the savoury custard mix (milk, eggs, cheese...)