Spiced Orange Shortbread

Every year at Christmas time I make shortbread as gifts for friends and family. It's an easy and cost-effective way of being able to spread some Christmas cheer and to give gifts made with love.

To put a bit of a twist on the traditional shortbread, this year I threw in a couple of my favourite flavours to give it a more festive feeling - spiced orange!

This recipe is incredibly simple to make vegan (please see recipe notes), I made it with both traditional butter and vegan butter and both came out perfect and delicious.

Spiced Orange Shortbread

Ingredients:

250 grams butter

130 grams caster sugar

350 grams plain flour

80 grams rice flour

1 Tablespoon all spice

Juice and zest of half an orange

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200C fan forced and line two baking trays with baking paper.

2.  Cut butter into small cubes. With an electric mixer on a medium speed, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

3. Sift in flours and spice to the butter and sugar. Mix with a wooden spoon until combined. Stir through orange juice and zest until combined.

4. Roll out shortbread dough until about 1.5CM thick. Using cookie cutters, cut shortbread into portions. Move shortbread's onto lined baking trays.

5. Bake for 10 - 12 minutes, or until biscuits have lightly browned.

Truly Scrumptious Chocolate Almond Brownies!

This recipe came about when I was low on money and needed snacks to fuel me for a few days and cure my craving for chocolate. I have had ground almond in the cupboard for so, so long, and never an excuse to use it. I decided to give it a go in this brownie recipe.

This recipe is very sweet and will definitely satisfy any chocolate craving.

Chocolate Almond Brownies
Yield 16

Ingredients:

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

50 grams flaked almonds

180 grams milk chocolate

3/4 cup coconut oil

3 eggs

280 grams golden caster sugar

110 grams ground almond

80 grams self raising flour

Method:

• Preheat oven to 180C

• In a pot over the stove, heat chocolate and coconut oil together until completely melted.

• In a separate bowl, whisk the three eggs together with vanilla essence.

• Combine chocolate mix with the eggs and continue to whisk for one minute.

• Add the ground almond and self raising flour to the mix and continue to whisk.

• Once everything is combined, stir the flaked almonds through the mix.

• Bake in the oven for 40 minutes for quite gooey brownies. For less moist brownies, bake for 45 minutes.

Nutritinal Information

These brownies are most certainly notthe healthiest snack in the world, but so worth it anyway.

For each brownie:

253 Calories

16g Fat

20g Sugar

4g Protein

36mg Cholesterol