Vanilla Salted Shortbread with Macerated Strawberries
Made with
Little Ceramic Jar with Vanilla Sea Salt
Little Ceramic Jar with Vanilla Sea Salt
Both salt and sugar have the magic effect of drawing liquid out of fresh ingredients, softening them, and in the case of berries and delicate fruit like strawberries, creating a syrup that’s jammy and delicious.
Our vanilla salt is fragrant and adds welcome complexity to summer fruits, sweet shellfish and root vegetables like carrots and parsnips.
Ingredients
- For the strawberries
- 300g strawberries, hulled, any larger fruits cut in half or quartered
- 1 heaped tbsp caster sugar
- ¼ tsp Halen Môn Vanilla Salt
- For the shortbread
- 180g plain white flour
- 20g cornflour
- 120g unsalted butter, removed from the fridge 15 minutes before cooking
- 70g caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
- 1/4 tsp roughly ground black pepper
- ¼ tsp Halen Môn Vanilla Salt
Method
- Stir the strawberries together with the caster sugar and salt until all the strawberries have been turned over in the sugar three or four times. Cover the bowl and set aside at room temperature for an hour, or up to 24 hours in the fridge for a more jammy flavour.
- Preheat the oven to 180°C. Sift the flour and cornflour into a food processor and cut the butter into 1cm cubes. Pulse the flour and butter together until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Tip in the sugar, pepper and salt and pulse again.
- Line a 20 x 20 cm baking tin with parchment paper and tip in the shortbread dough. Use a spatula to press the dough down into the tin. The dough will be crumbly, but will come together as it cooks. Sprinkle over an extra spoonful of caster sugar and slide into the middle shelf in the oven. Bake for 22 – 25 minutes until golden on top. Once cooked, remove the tin from the oven and slice into squares or fingers while the biscuit is still hot. Allow to cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then use the paper to lift the shortbread onto a cooling rack, gently pushing the sliced biscuits apart as you do.
- Serve the strawberries with some of their syrup spooned on top of some yoghurt or crème fraiche, with a finger or few little squares of shortbread alongside.
- Once cooled, the shortbread will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.
