by: Paul Curran

Traditional Scottish produce and ideal in a box or tin for a christmas gift.

Christmas recipe makes: 2 to 3 dozen

Calories per biscuit: 180-270

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Not suitable for freezing

Christmas recipe ingredients:

butter, 450 g (1 lb)

sugar, caster 225 g (8 oz)

flour, plain white 450 g (1 lb)

rice, ground or flour 225 g (8 oz)

salt, pinch

sugar, colored granulated or golden

sugar, caster for sprinkling

All these recipe ingredients must be at room temperature.

Christmas recipe instructions:

1. Mix the sugar and butter until a creamy and fluffy consistency. Mix together the salt, rice flour and flour. Now blend with the creamy mixture and mix until it is breadcrumb like.

2. Take some mixture in your hand and form a ball shape that can be rolled into a 2-3 inch (5-7.5 cm) tube shape. Enclose in cling film and cool till hard.

3. Cut the tube of dough into half inch slices (10 mm) and coat the edges with the golden or granulated sugar. Bake until slightly golden at 190 degrees centigrade(gas mark 5, 375 F) for about 25 minutes. Sprinkle with caster sugar after removing from the oven.

4. After 10 minutes transfer to a wire rack for complete cooling.

Changes you can make to the recipe:

Add a spice such as 'mixed spice' to the flours to make a Spiced Shortbread.

To make a Ginger Shortbread add ground ginger to the flours and crystallized ginger to the dough from step 1.

For Chocolate Chip Shortbread blend chocolate pieces into the dough.

For Lavender Shortbread, add half a dozen lavender flower tops into the dough. This time roll the dough into thin pieces, cut intobiscuit shape and bake for about quarter of an hour.

For Rosemary Shortbread, just replace the lavender with fresh chopped rosemary and carry on as above.