Lemon and Blueberry Shortbread Spirals

Not much has happened in the baking department this month, which is strange considering I spent half of it not having to go to work due to it being the school holidays.  I've just not felt terribly enthused to do so.  Or when I have I've been making stuff I've made before so I don't really have anything to post about.  

This week though I was determined to bake something.  Anything.  But preferably biscuits.  I enjoy making biscuits.  I was actually intending to make biscuits for me but ended up doing something for the fiancé instead since I had dried blueberries sitting in my cupboard that needed to be used up.  I decided I wanted to make lemon and blueberry biscuits.  Those two flavours have been successful in previous uses of the combination.  Plus the fiancé really likes lemon.  And since the orange shortbread turned out nice and has a good dough for shaping/cutting I thought I would just make a lemon version of that (minus the chocolate topping though).

As for the blueberry bit, as I said I had dried ones to use.  But rather than just mix them into the dough I thought it would be nice to make a spiral pattern with them, just to make it a little fancier.  My initial thought on how to do this was to roll the dough out flat, fill with blueberries and the roll up before slicing into biscuits.  That didn't work obviously.  The blueberries were too clumped together and made it difficult to roll the dough. Even when I could slice off a biscuit it just looked a mess, not a neat spiral.  So I pulled it all apart again and went about it in a different and much more effective manner.  I made sausages of dough, lined up blueberries along the and then rolled those up.  I got some lovely spirals as a result.  

The fiancé calls them 'more-ish'.  He says the two flavours blend well together, the biscuit is nice and crunchy and the berries are just the right texture: not too hard and not too chewy.  He was worried the berries would make the biscuits a bit soft but that wasn't the case.  He has to restrain himself from eating too many at a time since he likes them so much.

Recipe  - adapted from Rachel Allen's recipe for orange shortbread via 4Food

Makes about 20 

• 100g/3.5oz butter, softened and diced, plus extra for greasing
• 150g/5.3oz plain flour, plus extra for dusting
• 50g/1.7oz caster sugar
• 1 tsp lemon extract
• 85g/3oz dried blueberries

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 and grease two baking trays with butter.
2. Sift the flour into a large bowl.
3. Dice up the butter and add to the flour, rubbing it in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs and there are no large lumps of butter.
4. Add the sugar and the lemon extract and mix together until you get a stiff dough (you may need to use your hands).  Do not add any additional liquid.
5. Split the dough into 20 equal sized balls.  
6. Roll a ball of dough out into a thin sausage about 10-15cm/4-6inches in length.
7. Press blueberries gently along the top of the dough sausage.  Leave a gap of about 1cm/0.5inches between the first blueberry and the rest since it will make it easier to roll up.
8. Carefully roll the dough into a spiral with the blueberries wrapped inside.  Once fully rolled flatten slightly and then place on the prepared trays. 
9. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the edges are golden.  They will still be a little soft in the centre when they come out but they do firm up as they cool.
10. Remove to a wire rack and allow to cool.