By Keighley’s Mike Armstrong, an award-winning master baker with a big passion for baking...

I'VE always wished I had a Scottish granny. Nothing against the two lovely ladies to whom I owe my taste for sherry trifle and evaporated milk and tin peaches, but if they ever baked a round of shortbread, it never made it onto the teatime table while I was visiting!

Despite not having a tartan bone in my body, I nurse a particular passion for shortbread as wild and romantic as anything in the work of Sir Walter Scott.

I was introduced to shortbread as an apprentice baker, making them in thistle moulds at Christmastime, but my first batch out of the oven was a disaster when I dusted over salt and not caster sugar! I had to brush off all the salt, and hoped no one would notice.

Shortbread is without doubt the finest biscuit Britain has ever produced, although strictly speaking – thanks to the efforts of the Scottish Association of Master Bakers – it's not a common biscuit at all, but a ''speciality item of flour confectionery''.

All you really need to know about shortbread is in the name – according to the encyclopaedia, 'short' has been used to describe a ''friable, brittle, crumbling texture'' since the medieval times. The first recipes called for 'barm', the yeasty foam formed by fermentation, along with butter and a peck of flour, but by the 19th century the leavening agent had returned to its duties in brewing and the shortbread had taken its current form – a sweet, crumbly biscuit.

This buttery biscuit is a real treat, and sadly you don't get them in a box of Family Circle (other brands of assorted biscuits are available) or nestling amongst pink wafers and custard creams at the blood donor centre – its natural habitat is Sunday china. The best way is to make shortbread at home. A classic shortbread recipe only contains three ingredients – flour, butter and sugar. This leads me to seek out a richer and tangier recipe, being ideal for Easter, which awakens your springtime taste buds.

RECIPE

EASTER LEMON SHORTBREAD BISCUIT

Makes 12

Ingredients:

35g/1.5oz icing sugar, sieved

35g/1.5oz caster sugar

125g/4.5oz butter, softened at room temperature

250g/9oz plain flour, sieved 3 times

1 lemon, zest and juice

Caster sugar for dusting

Method:

1. Cream together the butter, caster and icing sugar until light and fluffy, with a wooden spoon, then add the flour and lemon zest and juice.

2. Combine with your fingertips until you have a firm but dry textured dough.

3. Place the crumbly mixture into an 8’’/20cm fluted flan dish or Victoria sandwich tin lined with baking paper on the base and lightly buttered sides.

4. Gently push down with the palm of your hand so the dough becomes smooth and level.

5. Divide the dough into 8 pieces with the tip of a sharp knife, then allow to rest ideally for 30 minutes in the fridge.

6. Bake in a preheated oven at 170C/150C fan/Gas Mark 3 for around 20-25 minutes or until pale golden, dust with sugar and score though the lines again before it cools so it snaps well.