Cheddar, cayenne & rosemary shortbread

Name: Cheddar, cayenne & rosemary shortbread
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 12 min
Total time: 22 min
Yield: 32
Ingredients: 100 g Essential Plain Flour; 2 pinch cayenne pepper (or to taste); 80 g Essential Unsalted Butter, cold and diced; 115 g Essential Extra Mature British Cheddar, grated; ½ tsp sea salt flakes; 2 sprig/s rosemary, finely chopped to give 2 tsp

Elly Curshen's recipe is perfect to make ahead – using leftovers too – so you can freeze and enjoy whenever you want.

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Vegetarian

Makes32
CourseSnack
Prepare10 mins
Cook12 mins
Total time22 mins
PlusChilling and cooling

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Ingredients

100g Essential Plain Flour
2 pinch cayenne pepper (or to taste)
80g Essential Unsalted Butter, cold and diced
115g Essential Extra Mature British Cheddar, grated
½ tsp sea salt flakes
2 sprig/s rosemary, finely chopped to give 2 tsp

Method

Add the flour and cayenne to a food processor with a few grinds of black pepper, then pulse to blend. Tip in the butter and cheese and blend until a dough comes together. It will look like breadcrumbs at first, but continue to pulse and it will quickly and magically form a smooth dough. Once you reach that point, stop. Do not overwork it.
Tip the dough onto your work surface and form into an evenly shaped sausage, about 4cm thick. Wrap in greaseproof paper (or reusable wax wrap) and chill for at least 1 hour until firm, or overnight.
To bake the biscuits, preheat the oven to 180ºC, gas mark 4 and line a baking tray with baking parchment. Slice the dough into 0.5cm discs and place at least 3cm apart on the tray. Sprinkle each biscuit with sea salt and a tiny pinch of rosemary, then gently press into the dough. Bake for 10-12 minutes. They should be just lightly golden on the edges.
Let the biscuits cool on the baking tray for a few minutes before carefully moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cook’s tip

Freeze the roll of dough up to 1 month ahead if you like. Either slice as many as you need from the frozen roll, or defrost the whole roll in the fridge overnight. The cooking time will be the same. The slicing, topping and baking can be done in less than 15 minutes.