Humidity is rising, Barometer's getting low

No man rain to be seen though.  In fact no rain of any type which means the house is about 8 million degrees, or there abouts.  The thought of spending the morning in the kitchen with the oven on gives me the shudders.  Fortunately fathers day is coming up so with busy ourselves with other things for the majority of the day (more on that next week) but it wasn't enough to hear "can we make cakes now" on repeat, so I caved and went for an easy option and decided on shortbread.  I got as far as the kitchen before remembering this weeks scouts fail - no golden caster sugar.  I do, however, have a small mountain of brown sugar so lets give this a go...

Better than toddler meltdown shortbread

50g brown sugar

140g - ish plain flour

100g room temperature butter or margarine

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

20g chocolate chopped in to small chunks or a handful of chocolate chips.

2 tsp caster sugar

Preheat my oven to 160 degrees.

Measure out the sugar and add to a bowl.  Make the mistake of putting it in front of your child.  Remove when you hear "mmmm, this tastes nice".  Add the fat and cream well.

Add in the vanilla extract and chocolate chips and give them a good stir.

Sift in the flour.  I normally start with 100g of flour and then keep adding until I have a nice dough.  Tip the bowl and it should fall rather than stay in a sticky mess.  Never ever demonstrate it not being ready by tipping the bowl over your head.  This action will stay in toddler memory until a point in time where you are in a crowded situation - probably a wedding - and will be re-enacted with soup. 

Gently roll out the dough on a well floured surface and cut in to whatever shape you wish.  Sprinkle the last of your caster sugar over the top and bake in my oven for 15 - 20 minutes (depending on biscuit thickness).  You want them firm to the touch but only coloured on the edges.

Remove from the tray and allow to cool.

They were a lot better than I expected in all honesty.  Brown sugar can sometimes make me go cccccccchhhhhhhhhh when I taste it but I think the chocolate and vanilla helped out with that.

Of course we didn't just want to eat one on a day like this so we took two and shoved a scoop of ice cream in between them.  You could turn this in to quite a fancy pants pudding if you did delicate thin biscuits and posh ice cream.  Top with a drizzle of melted chocolate.  Yum!