In the 1930s, our Scottish great-grandmother collected and wrote down recipes throughout the war years in a thick, hardbound notebook. Rations made basic ingredients hard to get hold of. Inside the front cover, written in long hand and black ink it reads;
“Where butter is mentioned, margarine is meant.”
Today we made shortbread using coconut oil, rather than butter, and it worked. Perhaps I could write a similar note one day; “where butter is mentioned, coconut oil is meant.“
Ingredients
125 g (½ cup) coconut oil
110 g (½ cup) sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon salt
315 g (2 cups) flour
2 tablespoons dessicated coconut
Method
- Grease a 25 cm (10”) springform cake tin and preheat the oven to 180 °C (360 °F).
- Beat the coconut oil, sugar, salt, and vanilla until well combined.
- Add the flour and dessicated coconut to the oil and sugar mixture and beat with an electric mixer on low speed until it resembles coarse bread crumbs.
- Place the mixture into a the cake tin. Using a shallow metal spoon and working from the edges into the centre, press and smooth the surface so that the mixture is compact and level.
- Bake for 18–20 minutes, or until the cake turns golden on the edges. The longer it bakes, the crunchier it gets.
- Remove from the oven, and while still hot, release the band and cut immediately.
Cool completely, about 30 minutes, then remove from the tin.
