Spring appeared to arrive in Paris this weekend — whether or not it will stay is another matter, but I went outside without a coat for the first time this year. I spotted the first roadside daffodils, drank my first St Germain spritz. Some early blossom trees have even come into bud. The terraces were overflowing into the street.
It’s good to see early spring produce arriving too, but at the same time, I’m gorging on Corsican grapefruit and Sicilian blood oranges before they dissappear from the farm shop for the year. Citrus season is drawing to a close, but we aren’t quite in strawberry territory either. March is that in-between phase. So when I wanted a light, delicate sweet treat, lemon shortbread seemed to fit the bill.
I say shortbread, but purists will tell me this isn’t really a traditional shorbread recipe. In fact, this is actually closer to a Viennese whirl recipe, it just isn’t piped, but that’s always given me the lightest, most delicate crumb, probably because it uses cornflour and icing sugar, very fine ingredients. Equally, purists will say that real butter is essential to shortbread, but I find the vegan version just fine - here the lemon flavour cuts through in priority in any event. In any case, these biscuits are beautifully delicate and very simple to make, whatever you want to call them.
Makes 12-15, depending on size.
Ingredients
For the bisucits:
1 cup plain flour
1/4 cup cornflour / cornstarch
1/4 cup icing sugar
zest of 1 lemon
1/2 cup vegan butter, softened (that’s about half a regular pat of butter, c. 125g)
For the icing:
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 cup icing sugar
Method
Preheat the oven to 170C (fan) and line a large baking sheet with greaseproof paper.
Sift together the flour, cornflour, and icing sugar, then add the lemon zest and stir so all are combined. Then add the soft butter and use your hands to cut the butter into the dry mix, kind of massaging it into the flour until you have a smooth buttery dough and everything is evenly incorporated.
On a lightly floured surface very gently roll out the dough and use a pastry cutter to cut 12-15 biscuits. You really don’t want to overwork the dough and it is very soft, so do this as quickly and simply as you can. Alternatively, you could pipe the dough into rosettes.
Space the biscuits out evenly on the baking sheet and bake for 13-15 minutes, until lightly golden at the edges and firm but no more than that. Leave them to cool completely.
Once cool, make the icing by sifting the icing sugar into a bowl and mixing in the lemon juice. Spoon the icing over the biscuits (it will run, that can’t be helped, but if they’re still on the greaseproofed baking sheet it shouldn’t be too messy to clear up). Leave them alone for the icing to set, and serve.