Recipes: Tantallon Cakes

To celebrate Burns Night, BBC Good Food Show star Paul Hollywood has provided us with his Tantallon Cakes recipe.

Paul Hollywood's Tantallon Cakes

Robert Burns referred to his homeland in the poem 'The Late Captain Grose's Peregrinations Thro' Scotland' as the 'Land O'cake'. As a solider Burns would carry flat cakes, which today we'd think of as biscuits, under his saddle flaps. It's said that these cakes kept the Scots stomachs warm and full, enabling them to perform a longer day's march than other soldiers.

These delicious shortbread biscuits are a low key nod to one of Scotland's most formidable fortifications, built at the time of Robert Burns, Tantallon Castle in East Lothian. Tantallon Castle was the home to the powerful and ruthless 'Red Douglases', the Earls of Angus. Oliver Cromwell laid waste to the castle in 1651 and it now stands in ruins.

If you visit the castle, be sure to take a camera. There have been at least two instances of ghostly figures in Tutor dress showing up in pictures!

Ingredients
100g unsalted butter, softened
100g icing sugar, plus extra for dusting
1 large egg yolk
Grated zest of ½ lemon
100g plain flour
100g cornflour
¼ tsp. bicarbonate sode

Equipment
A 6.5cm pastry cutter

Method
Beat the butter and icing sugar together until light and fluffy in a bowl, then beat in the egg yolk, followed by the lemon zest.

Sift the flour, cornflour and bicarbonate of soda together. Stir them into the butter and sugar mixture a spoonful at a time, then bring the mixture together into a dough and knead briefly until smooth.

Line 2x baking trays with baking parchment. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to a 5mm thickness. Using a 6.5cm fluted cutter, stamp out rounds and place them on the lined baking tray, pressing the trimmings together and re rolling them to make more biscuits as necessary.

Prick the biscuits all over with a fork and chill for 30 minutes; this helps to prevent spreading in the oven. Heat the oven to 180 degrees c / gas mark 4.

Bake the biscuits for 10-12 minutes, until they are just starting to colour. Leave them on the baking tray for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool. Dust with icing sugar before serving, if you like.

See Paul cooking and baking live at a BBC Good Food Show during 2016: www.bbcgoodfoodshow.com