An odd side effect of growing your own food is that sometimes you have very small amounts of produce. For example, we harvested a handful of carrots this week, thinning out space for the other carrots to grow bigger. This gave us about 8 small carrots which is barely a snack of one person, never mind a side for three, so I had to think of something we could make that use the carrots to best effect.
I decided a good snack for a picnic we were attending would be Carrot and Cheese Shortbread. I know shortbread is normally a sweet treat, but why should it be!?
This recipe was a bit trial and error, but it worked out so well, I’m really pleased with it. And if we have another small batch of carrots I intend to do the same again, but freeze the dough so that we have ready shortbread whenever we want – I think it’s a great way of saving summer produce too! I’ll let you know how I get on with that.
In the meantime, here’s the carrot and cheddar shortbread recipe.
- 115g (4oz) salted butter
- 90g (3oz) carrot and cheese*
- ¼ tsp salt
- ½ tsp pepper
- ½ tsp thyme
- ½ tsp rosemary
- 220g (1¼ cups) plain flour
- 1 tbs water (a bit more if your flour is organic)
- (If you're not using a Thermomix®, grate the carrot first)
- Add room temperature butter to a mixing bowl and using an electric beater whisk it till it's light and fluffy
- Add a mixture of carrot and cheese to add up to 90g. In this case I used 45g of each, but more or less of whichever you have, to add up to 90g.
- Add the rest of the ingredients, except the water and mix until combined
- Add the water and mix till it combines and pulls away from the sides
- Tip out onto greaseproof paper, and shape into a sausage. Chill for 30 minutes in the fridge.
- After 30 minutes, turn the oven on to 180C/350F. Slice the sausage into 1cm thick slices and place on a baking tray. Bake for 20 -25 minutes.
- Leave to cool.