Vanilla shortbread

After a very successful trip to our local farmers market yesterday I came home with, amongst other things a kilo of rhubarb. As we had friends over for lunch today I thought I'd make something with that for pudding but I needed something crunchy to go with it. After searching through seemingly endless recipes I found this recipe on the Nigella website.

There is always a bit of a debate about salted vs unsalted butter for baking. I never buy unsalted butter as I really don't like it so therefore I never use it in baking. I've not really noticed a difference and it never seems to affect the end product. Just my twopenneth there !

VANILLA SHORTBREAD
makes between 25-30

100g icing sugar
200g plain flour
100g cornflour
200g softened butter
seeds from 1 vanilla pod

Sift the icing sugar, flour and cornflour into the bowl of a food processor
Add the diced butter and vanilla seeds
Process until it all comes together and forms a dough
Press into a swiss roll tin. It will seem ages but it will all fit with some encouragement
Score into the required number of biscuits and use a fork to prick each one
Bake at 160C for 20-25 minutes
Leave to cool in the tin for 10 mins and then remove to a wire rack

You can discard the vanilla pods once you've scraped out the seeds but I added them to my sugar barrel to make the most deliciously scented vanilla sugar.