Recipe: Nightmare Before Christmas Shortbread

Happy Friday!! If you don't know or couldn't tell from previous posts or my social media accounts, one of my favourite films ever is Nightmare Before Christmas. There aren't enough words to describe just how much I love it. And this year I wanted to incorporate it into my Halloween bakes which is where Etsy came very much in handy. I managed to find these amazing and decently priced cookie cutters on there. So today we have a simple shortbread recipe with a spooky twist, a brilliant recipe for any fans of Nightmare Before Christmas or Tim Burton.

Ingredients 
115g Butter
55g Caster Sugar
A Pinch Of Salt
175g Plain Flour

Method 
1- Pre heat oven to 180C. Line a large baking tray or two small baking trays with baking parchment.
2- In a bowl place your flour, sugar and salt.
3- Add the butter and rub in with your fingers until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
4- Keep rubbing together until it starts to form a dough. Add a little water if necessary to get the dough to stick together. Don't overwork the dough though, you want it still have that slight crumbliness to it that makes the shortbread that little softer in texture.
5- Once you have your dough, place on a lightly floured surface and roll out until a 1/2inch thick. Make sure you keep your rolling pin floured as the dough may stick to it once you've rolled it a few times.

6- Then comes the fun bit. Choose your first character and press the cutter firmly into the dough. I say firmly as you want it to actually imprint onto the dough but not to stick to the dough so it's ruined when you pull the cutter away.
7- Repeat with each of your characters, rerolling the dough each time until you have your desired amount. As the cutters I used are quite large I only managed to get two of each character out but that still gave me a good twelve pieces of shortbread.
8- Once you've filled your baking tray/s place them in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until the edges are golden and the middles still a little soft. They'll soon firm up as they cool but you don't want to leave them in too long otherwise they'll catch and burn.
9- When they're cooked leave to cool on the tray for a few minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack to cool completely. Or you could wait a few minutes and taste test one for yourself like I did.
10- All that's left then is to enjoy them. And trust me when I say one won't be enough and before you know it, you're entire batch will be gone.