Baking for Beginners: Lemon and Elderflower Shortbread

Continuing my theory that baking summery food will coax summer out of hiding, this shortbread recipe uses the light, delicate flavours of lemon zest and elderflower cordial to make biscuits that taste of sunshine. Shortbread is a rich, buttery biscuit, and the generous pinch of salt in this recipe helps counter that.

Use your own elderflower and lavender syrup or just some elderflower cordial (which you can buy just about everywhere now, in the squash aisle of your supermarket).

Lemon and Elderflower Shortbread

You will need:

• 150g butter (at room temperature)
• 75g caster sugar 
• 225g plain flour
• Pinch of salt
• Zest of one lemon
• 2 tsp elderflower cordial

Make it!

1. Preheat the oven to 150C/300F/gas mark 2.
2. Cream together the butter and caster sugar using a food mixture or wooden spoon.
3. Add the flour, salt, lemon zest and elderflower cordial and mix until it resembles breadcrumbs.
4. Use your hands to bring it together into a crumbly dough, and gently press it out to 1cm thick. Don't use a rolling pin as you'll overwork it and make it tough.
5. Pop the biscuits in the fridge for 15 minutes. This stops the mixture spreading as much in the oven and will give you thicker shortbread.
6. Bake for 25-30 minutes until pale golden-brown. They should be firm round the edges but soft in the middle. Leave to cool for a few minutes on the tray before transferring to a cooling rack.