Week 7: NE Patriots vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers in London- English Shortbread

I just realized its been four days since I had a blog entry. As someone who blogs nearly everyday, that's surprising to me. It's not that I haven't been cooking and baking, its just I haven't had much worth sharing. There was a cauliflower pasta bake that was good, but not exactly great. The same for some pumpkin and black beans quesadillas- tasty enough, yet nothing to write home about. There were some yummy cranberry muffins from a recipe I've been experimenting with, and should be ready to share soon. (I think the next batch will be perfect.)

Anyhow, all of these were decent/good, but I did have one immense failure. This week the Patriots were playing the Bucs. Now I've grown up living very close to Tampa, and absolutely nothing came to mind as traditional Tampa food. But it just so happened the game was being played in London. I decided it would be fun to try an English recipe. After browsing some sites, I decided I didn't want to make a meal since pretty much most English dinners involve beef, which we rarely ever eat. I thought crumpets would be nice. Sage didn't seem too excited-he would've rathered me do a roast.

After an attempt at crumpets- which was nothing short of a disater- I realized I should done a roast. Lets see, first I forgot it called for an egg until after the batter had sat for 40 of the 60 minutes it was to rise, then I completely overheated my griddle (I haven't used non-stick cookware in a long time) and burned the first four badly. (And myself, unfortunately.) Then because I overfilled the rings about 3 times more than I should've, I only had enough left over to make two more. I guess my pan was still too hot, because not only did they not look like a crumpet should with bubbley little holes, they tasted somewhat burnt. Sage's words: Not your best work, honey. So after a few bites, they went in the trash, and I was coming to terms with the fact that I'd have no recipe to share for my little football-food challenge this week.

Only, I couldn't do it. Before deciding upon crumpets, I'd considered Shortbread. So next thing I knew I was in the kitchen, whipping up a batch. How I wish I'd done this first! These were so easy to make, and came out delicious- light, buttery, not too sweet. Sage was thrilled. (Apparently he loves shortbread? News to me.) I'll admit mine leave a little to be desired in the appearance department, but at this point, I wasn't in the mood to fuss. I do wish I had skipped the fork marks though. The recipe said it was the "trademark" of an authentic shortbread, but I'm pretty sure my toddler could've done a better job than I did. I think next time, I'll cut them out with a cute cookie cutter. This recipe yields 45-50 cookies, so I quartered it and got 9 two-inch squares. Since other than that, I did nothing to alter this recipe, I'm just going to link to the original.