Some days you just have to make shortbread

I've had a day of doing things. Nice things, all of them -- steaming a Christmas pudding (it's Stir Up Sunday already, somehow), making a #YayBauble, cutting the chap's hair, catching up on emails to friends -- but somehow the whole day's had an air of 'must get on, lots to do!' and a slightly stressful feel.

And so, having finished my to-dos around half six, I found myself making chequerboard biscuits. Because of course. Stressful day = do more stuff.

(As an aside, I once had a phone call with a friend so perplexing and baffling that I immediately had to make shortbread afterwards to recover. It's a thing.)

I don't know what put me in mind of this style of biscuit, but the idea emerged fully formed and I just had to follow it. I couldn't find a decent online recipe that wasn't all in sticks of butter and cups of flour and so on, and I couldn't face the conversions. So I dug out a very ancient shortbread recipe (Year 4 baking, possibly) and adapted it to proceed thusly:

• 100g butter
• 50g sugar (the recipe says caster, but I only have granulated)
• 175g flour
• 1.5 ish tbsps cocoa powder (ie what remained in the tin. Your tin will differ: use your judgement)
• 1tsp vanilla essence

Beat butter and sugar together, work in flour. It will look impossibly dry, but work it with your hands and it will come together. (This bit never worked when I was young and had, presumably, hands that were too small and/or cold.) Spilt this in two before it's fully coalesced and add the cocoa to one half and vanilla to the other. Work each half into a smooth dough.

Divide each lump of dough into two, and roll each piece into a sausage of equal length. Put the sausages together Battenburg-cake style, and shape 'til it's roughly square in cross section. Cut into 0.5cm slices, bake at 160C (gas 4) for 25 minutes.

Voila!

In other news, the weekly meal planning continues, and has been working well. It's turned out that it's not the organising of Proper Meals that's been the main issue, but the provisioning of sufficient snackage to keep the chap happy when he's cycling 17 miles a day. But we're getting there. Alternate weekly commuting into London continues, too, with trains getting gradually busier and less maskful, sigh. 

Advent baking starts next weekend. Hurrah! I have already been prepping spice mixes. Watch this space...