Traditional Scottish Shortbread (with a twist) I Prepared At Balmoral Castle For The Queen

you have to wear it you're going up to balmoral and it's really cold up there [Music] the queen and the duke of edinburgh have been self-isolating at windsor castle now for about five months and soon they're heading north to scotland and their beloved balmoral castle as a tribute as a celebration because i know how much the queen loves balmoral i'm going to show you how to make the scottish shortbread that i used to make every balmoral traditional scottish shortbread is normally flour butter and a sugar it can be granulated sugar it can be powdered sugar but they're the three basic ingredients the royal recipe we add corn starch too and cornstarch softens the shortbread it makes it less glutinous and it's instead of going when you break it like that and snapping it crumbles it melts in your mouth it's just melting your mouth gorgeous delicious let me show you how to make it we start off with the flour and add the powdered sugar and the butter and then the cornstarch all into one bowl a little salt and i've got some vanilla paste which i'll add just in just a second it's such an easy dish to make and you just rub together all of those ingredients and it's best to do it by hand get the butter nice and soft and just rub all those ingredients until they start to come together as nice crumbs and that's when we'll add the vanilla paste and bring it together into a bowl that we can roll out i used to make shortbread at least once a week at balmoral and it was always on the afternoon team menu all of the staff look forward to going to balmoral and balmoral is a 50 000 acre estate and it's so pretty it's it's just absolutely gorgeous countryside and we couldn't wait to get up there the chefs love balmoral castle it's a 50 000 acre estate and it's just full of local ingredients and produce the the venison off the estate the the salmon from the river d everything is so fresh and then to top it all it has its own vegetable garden that supplies the house for the the whole time that the queen and the family are up there uh beautiful raspberries and strawberries i i even remember the queen picking those berries uh when she was at balmoral and it's just a fabulous place to go it's so relaxing it's so calming and you can see why the queen wants to get up to balmoral i love going back to balmoral i host culinary trips to scotland come with me on my next trip the link is in the description once the shortbreads all come together i'm then going to put it into my mold i've got a shortbread mold like we used at balmoral and you can probably see the little thistle on there the thistle is the emblem of scotland tradition had it that during the war years and years ago the english were fighting the scots and back in those days of course no one wore shoes they'd run in bare feet and have swords and well the scots were sleeping and the evil english thought they would attack during the night and they ran and attacked the scots but as they ran through this field it was full of thistles and they got the stuck in their feet and they were screaming and shouting it woke the scots and it saved the day and the scots won the battle now i don't know if that's true it sounds good it may have been something that was invented over a wee drama whiskey in the pub somewhere but it sounds good doesn't it so that's what i'm going with that's the thistle the emblem of scotland on there so with my mold and i if you can't get a mold i put a link in the description below so you can order one i'm going to put some flour in there first so that my shortbread doesn't stick then i can take some of the shortbread and just mold it nicely together and put it into the mold and press and all i'm doing is pressing that down into the mold and once i've done that i take my knife and just run it across the top to take off the excess if you look closely you can see those gorgeous flakes of vanilla beans in there that's my madagascan vanilla bean paste and and i've told you about that before and there's a link in the description if you can't get that from your local store then it drops out into your hand look at that oh you can see that pretty thistle on there onto some parchment paper now if you don't want to use the mold you can use a little cutter and roll out the dough and then just cut the little discs in there make some little cookies they're absolutely gorgeous once the shortbread is on the tray i then have to pierce the top with a fork and what this does is as the shortbread bakes the heat goes into the base of the shortbread and helps it cook faster don't worry about all those holes in there they're going to be full of sugar when it comes out of the oven we do a really nice sprinkle over the top now all we need to do is put it in the oven 350 degrees for about 20 minutes once the shortbread's done and a nice golden brown we can take it out of the oven to cool look at that and it smells gorgeous but before it cools we have to cut it score it into little wedges otherwise when you try and break it later once it's cold it'll just break in all sorts of pieces it's like a jigsaw puzzle so carefully go into the shortbread but you're only going like a third of the way down it's such a delicious shortbread a versatile shortbread if you want to flavor this you can put some lavender in there you can put some orange or lemon zest you can put some chocolate chips in for the kids some cranberries it's such a easy recipe to make as well that you can get the kids involved in cooking it too then a little sugar over the top okay a lot of sugar but we can't cut into it yet all the way because it's still soft in the center we've only scored it ready for once it's cold it'll be easier to break now we leave it for about an hour to cool and then we can serve it once it's cooled down we can then lift it off the tray onto the plate and because we've scored it remember we went through with the knife just a little way when we put it onto the plate we can tilt it backwards and it'll just start to break where we want it to in the right pieces and the same on this side doesn't it look amazing imagine this on the table out bone moral for afternoon tea all we need is a cup of tea a little piece of shortbread look how crumbly and gorgeous that is it's so sweet um it's not crunchy because of the cornstarch in there it needs some tea a little earl grey balmoral scottish shortbread absolutely melt in your mouth delicious hope you enjoyed the video thanks for watching click on the subscription below if you've not subscribed leave a comment click a like for me too oh you want some shortbread don't you well you've been good you've still got your jacket on you can have a half a shortbread okay sit good boy

Channel: Darren McGrady

Views: 185,533

Rating: 4.9558582 out of 5

Keywords: Royal family, Food, British food, The Queen, buckingham palace, foodie, celebrity chef, eating royally, prince william, prince harry, queen, britishroyals, royal, royalty, Delish, Darren McGrady, Royalchef, food, royal eats, british food, Gordon Ramsey, queens chef, windsor castle, queens food, food network, recipes, dallas caterer, wedding caterer, corporate caterer, Queens favorite dessert, shortbread, scottish shortbread, scottish food, teacakes, balmoral, balmoral castle

Id: pSlqs4QmCxc

Length: 8min 45sec (525 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 04 2020