Heavy Metal Shortbread

OK. Well - I guess I'd better write up this next humiliating attempt at cooking biscuits. It wasn't as bad as before. But not great. I hate butter biscuits, I don't know why I keep trying to cook the bloody things.

First of all - recipe is here. And my God - it's almost in real measurements! Everything is measured by weight - not sticks (what the hell are they on?) or cups - but they chose to weigh things in ounces. They need to get a proper set of scales. We like grams!

9oz plain (all purpose) flour
3oz caster sugar
6oz unsalted butter (NOT MARGARINE)

They're very insistent on the margarine point. I expect that lard or beef dripping are both equally unsuitable. Butter, fool! Unsalted if you have it.

Those measurements were too much so I halved everything, roughly.

Here's the raw ingredients with their wrappers on:

The flour is two years out of date (my God, what a surprise!), I'll have to get some more, but other than that it's all fresh and good. I figured the flour would be alright - I think with flour it's a case of no weevils, no worries. There was nothing crawling around in there.

Here's the flour and sugar, all ready to be mixed together. Mixing flour and sugar is very easy so even *I* managed to do that:

The messy bit comes next - rub the butter into the flour:

Now, pour into a tin and press it down. Here's my tip - DO NOT PACK THE STUFF IN TOO TIGHTLY!!! Take it from me, if you really press the stuff in then it binds together and comes out like slabs of roofing tile.

You'll note that mine is really REALLY jammed solidly into that tin. You know, five year-old kids make this stuff at primary school. Sometimes I just loathe myself.

I then scraped the surface with a fork, stuck a few holes in it and divided it roughly into six. This is actually a good idea, if you rough the surface up then it comes out really nicely when cooked. This was the best bit of the finished product.

Then you pop it into a pre-heated oven at 160° for half an hour.

Now half an hour seemed an awful long time to wait. I was hungry NOW. I was also feeling quite satisfied with my efforts. The poor deluded fool that I was. Anyway, to celebrate I thought I'd try a new variety pack that I got this week - Coco Pops Crunchers. I don't usually get cereal so I don't know, these might have been out forever - but it's the first time I've seen them.

They're more sugary than the usual Coco Pops. They said they had oats in there along with the rice, but they tasted a bit like marshmallow or something. My Coco Pops are usually sugary enough to begin with - I have two tablespoons of sugar with cereal, I need to hide the taste of the milk (I can't swallow cow juice if I can taste it, I just retch it back up) - so the extra sugariness in the Crunchers was a bit wasted on me. Here's the bowl before I gave it a good stir:

... and here it is after it's turned the milk brown (as all good cereal should):

My verdict on the Coco Pops Crunchers - hum. They're alright. Prefer Coco Pops.

OK, so the minutes ticked by and eventually the biscuits were ready:

I left them for a while and then tried one. It's difficult to describe the sensation - it had the texture of granite, albeit with a wonderful fluffy top, and the taste of sheet steel. They may be crappy biscuits but they really hurt if you whap yourself across the face with them. I had to stop after a while, I was starting to pass out.

So. These things are awful. Another pigging disaster. Where did I go wrong? I managed to struggle through two but the rest will have to go in the bin. I'd leave them out for the birds but I don't want to have to brush dead starlings off my balcony every morning. I need to find something easier(!) to make, I can't stand another horrible culinary failure like this. And I was so pleased with myself when they went in the oven! It just goes to show - the proof of the pudding really is in the tasting.