Spooky Shortbread Fingers

In conjunction with Halloween, I have made these creepy fingers. I have adapted the recipe from Coffee and Vanilla and modified it to suit my taste and I only made a dozen fingers with this.

I like flaky and crumbly shortbread, the texture of pies and tarts pastry if you know what I mean. I have changed the method slightly and incorporated a pastry rubbing technique called Frissage. It's a French term which basically means smearing the butter into the flour so you get alternating sheets of them.


Spooky Fingers
(makes a dozen)

45g unsalted butter, cold
1/2 cup plain flour
2 tbsp dark muscovado sugar
1 heaped tsp vanilla sugar
2 tsp milk

Preheat the oven to 175°C. Place all the ingredients above in a food processor and pulse it several times until you get a uniform crumbles. Pour all out onto a clean work table and use the Frissage Rubbing Technique (I've heard a lot about this in words but never seen a video so well made!) to work the dough. The frissage method really produces a flaky shortbread that I like better in terms of texture. You just need to do it once and that will suffice since it's a small batch of dough. Cling wrap it and chill it in the fridge for 30mins or so.

12 roasted peanut halves
1 wooden skewer or toothpick

After 30mins, gently roll the dough into 12 balls. Just eyeball it, the more uneven you are, the more different sizes of fingers you get. Roll it to form a finger shape, give it a few crest and lines with the toothpick to mimic a real finger. Finally press the peanut halves on the end of each finger as nails.

Bake it for 15 to 20 mins at 175°C. It will firm up further upon cooling

We finished our fingers in less than an hour. I like how muscovado sugar flavours the fingers. There's just no substitute for it, muscovado itself has a very unrefined, pure and Chrismassy feeling for me.

Now, get your oven preheated and whip up these spooky and creepy fingers to impress your friends!