Cooking: English Shortbread

In honour of the Mongolian mum of one of our friends from the International School who loves all things English; easy peasy cook it in the microwave in ten minutes flat shortbread.

100 g / 4 oz plain flour
50 g / 2 oz cornflour
100 g / 4 oz butter
50 g / 2 oz sugar

Prepare a microwave-safe cake tin by lining with greased baking parchment - I use the lid of a Pyrex casserole.
Pour all the ingredients into a bowl and knead together with a spoon until mixture is evenly mixed.  The mixture will be quite dry - don't worry.
Tip into the dish and press down firmly.  Mark the top into segments and sprinkle with sugar.
Cook on HIGH for 3 - 3 1/2 minutes.
Whilst still warm divide into segments (when it cool is goes crispy and is more likely to crack).
Leave to cool and enjoy with a cup of tea.
VARIATIONS:
Substitute the following for all or part of the cornflour.
Ground rice (gives a "crunchy" texture)
ground almonds
semolina
cocoa powder
Also good drizzled with melted chocolate.

Cooking for kids: Smartie Cookies

Easy throw it all together recipe that contains no eggs.

100 g butter

100 g sugar

1 tbsp golden syrup or honey

150 g self raising flour

85 g Smarties (or any other sugar coated chocolate beans)

Throw everything together in a bowl and mix to form a soft dough (if mixture is too dry then add a tbsp of milk).  Place heaps of the mixture onto baking trays lined with parchment; use a teaspoonful for each heap for standard size cookies (we prefer to use a dessertspoon and have giant cookies), space well apart as they spread as they cook.  Bake in the oven (Gas Mark 4/ 350F/180C) for 12 minutes-18 minutes until they are golden brown.

Take cookies out, they should be really soft, allow to cool on the tray for a couple of minutes to firm up a little.  Put cookies onto a cooling rack – if they are too hard and they break as you remove them from the tray pop back into the warm oven for a minute to soften again.