Name: Hawaiian Shortbread
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 18 min
Ingredients: 250 g Unsalted butter (room temperature); 200 g Pure icing sugar; 2 tsp Vanilla bean paste; 300 g Plain flour; 90 g Rice flour; 50 g Cornflour; 2 tbsp Milk; 80 g Macadamias (chopped); 90 g Dried mango (finely chopped); 20 g Dessicated coconut; 100 g White chocolate (chopped)

Sweet, buttery, "short" and crumbly, Hawaiian Shortbread is a deliciously tropical treat! Loaded with coconut, macadamias, mango and white chocolate.

I'm not sure if it's my sweet tooth or my Scottish heritage, but I LOVE shortbread! It's sooo sweet and buttery, perfect with a cup of tea, and (as my sister Helen has taught me) wonderfully adaptable!

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Helen shared this recipe with me earlier this year. We'd just booked our annual girls trip, with her and my niece Stephanie, and we were so excited! Helen hadn't been to Hawaii since she was pregnant with Steph 27 years ago, Steph had never been before and I was looking forward to returning after my first trip there 2 years ago. As soon as it was booked, everything became Hawaiian themed, which is how Hawaiian Shortbread came to be.

But then some stupid pandemic turned the world upside down, and our Hawaiian holiday, as well as my New York Marathon trip (as support crew to my husband and son!) and my annual family snow holiday were all cancelled. So our plans for Hawaii have all been put on hold. I guess we'll just have to keep making this Shortbread to get us through!

ADAPTING BASE RECIPES

Helen is the queen at changing recipes around and mixing in different flavours. She's put the Lemonade Scone recipe to so many uses and was my inspiration for turning it into Quick Cinnamon Rolls From Scratch. And she's made so many varieties of Shortbread....but this Hawaiian Shortbread is my favourite! And she's letting me share it as well!

QUICK AND EASY SHORTBREAD

Hawaiian Shortbread is so easy to make. Whip up the recipe in 10 minutes, give it an hour to chill and then it's just 18 minutes of baking. To make it even easier, freeze some of the shortbread dough, so you can just grab what you want from the freezer, pop it in the oven and have it ready in the time it takes to make a cup of tea!

HOW TO MAKE HAWAIIAN SHORTBREAD

INGREDIENTS

The "short" in shortbread refers to the crumbly texture of these cookies and is thanks to the high butter content and lack of moisture in the dough. The rice flour and corn flour also contribute to that lovely short texture.

To make these deliciously tender and short cookies, you'll need:

butter
icing sugar
vanilla paste
plain flour
rice flour
corn flour
milk
macadamia nuts
dessicated coconut
dried mango
white chocolate

CUTTING THE DOUGH (AND OPTIONAL FREEZING)

Once the dough is mixed, you then roll it into 2 logs, refrigerate for an hour and then slice into cookies. I'm a little more generous with my cookie sizes than Helen and only get 24 cookies from this recipe, but you can roll the logs to whatever size you want, but just keep the slices to around 1cm thick.

If you want to store some of the unbaked shortbread in the freezer (perfect for a quick little shortbread baking sesh!), just slice the dough and pop the slices into a container, separating each layer with baking paper.

So here it is....Helen's Hawaiian Shortbread. When the world returns to normal and we can start traveling again, us girls will be on the first plane out of Australia, heading to Hawaii. I expect Helen to come up with some more tropical Hawaiian-themed treats then...