I can’t believe it’s Tuesday already and time to post our creations from Baking with Julia. This weeks recipe is a buttery flaky Hungarian Shortbread.

I have made shortbread before and one thing I knew was the more buttery it is the better it will taste. When I went through the recipe for the first time I was amazed. The recipe calls for a pound of butter. That is a lot of butter even a person like me who is never shy with the use of butter while baking. I decided to make half recipe and used a 8 X 8 cake pan.

Hungarian shortbread uses a very interesting technique. Once the dough comes together it is popped into the freezer for 30 minutes and then the frozen dough is grated directly into the cake pan. Well it makes sense, with the amount of butter used in the dough if the dough was handled by hand, the heat from the hands might have compromised the texture of the Shortbread. The grating allowed a more fluffy texture.

This Shortbread had a surprise layer of Jam in between. I used Apricot jam instead of the Rhubarb jam recommended in the recipe. I am a jam lover and I really wanted a substantial amount between those two layer of the buttery Shortbread. I used a whole jar of jam. At the end I felt it was a little sweet for my taste. For next time I will cut down on the sugar used in the dough to compensate for the extra jam.

Overall it was a quick dessert to put together. The recipe can be found on the blogs of the hosts : Lynette of 1smallkitchen and Cher of The not so exciting adventures of a dabbler… .