301/984 - Passionfruit shortbread biscuits

I joined the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap for the second time this year, which is an American run event run by Love and Olive Oil and The Little Kitchen. Each cookie swap participant is provided with three sets of contact details and commits to baking three dozen biscuits to distribute. On the 11th December, participating bloggers around the world will be posting their cookie recipes and a round up of all pictures and blog posts will be posted on the websites of the administrators mentioned above. The event is a fundraiser for Cookies for kids cancer which means that the event is great fun and also doing great things!

My boys were less than thrilled to see my lovely spotty biscuits laid out, only to be told that they were about to be shipped away. However disappointment turned to glee as my three gorgeous packages arrived! 

From Giulia at Love at Every Bite

I have been lucky twice now, in both years receiving the most beautiful biscuits and also some lovely notes and messages too. The first biscuits I received were from the lovely Giulia from Love at Every Bite. There were two types of biscuits in the beautiful Christmas tin and the kids loved them both. I will definitely be heading to the websites of these lovely ladies to get the recipes and start replicating! 

The Kitchen & the Camera

Alicia from The Kitchen and the Camera sent some amazing shortbread which were so good I will not share how many of these I ate! And lastly, I received a beautiful Christmas case filled with individually wrapped gingerbread men, ladies, reindeer and candy canes from Traci at Cookie Queen Kitsch'n. I have saved a couple of these to share with my nieces and nephew on Christmas day because they were too cute to gobble up all at once!   

Cookie Queen Kitsch'n

The biscuits I decided to send this year were Stephanie's passionfruit shortbread biscuits. My tip for participants of the swap is to always make at least 37 so you can taste one before you send them! The recipe can be found in the traditional hard copy of The Cook's Companion or indeed in the recently launched Cook's Companion app. 

The only change I made was to halve the amount of icing. I have listed the full amount below just in case I am in the minority and people prefer a generous amount of icing!

Passionfruit Shortbread Biscuits

180g softened butter

1 tsp finely grated lemon zest

2/3 cup pure icing sugar

pulp of 3 passionfruit

100g cornflour, sifted

180g self-raising flour, sifted

Icing

50g butter

1 cup pure icing sugar

pulp of 2 passionfruit

1. Cream butter, zest and icing sugar
2. Mix in passionfruit pulp, cornflour and flour
3. Chill for 20 minutes
4. Preheat oven to 220°C (430°F)
5. Pipe rounds or fingers of batter onto trays lined with baking paper (or make balls and flatten them as I did!)
6. Bake until golden brown, approximately 5-8 minutes
7. Cool on a wire rack before icing
8. Melt butter and put icing sugar into a small bowl
9. Add pulp to melted butter then stir into icing sugar
10. Beat hard for 1-2 minutes over hot water until icing is really shiny.
11. Dip or ice biscuits and dry on a wire rack. There will be less drips if you choose to halve the icing mixture as I did. 

And there we have it! Another completely enjoyable cookie swap done and dusted. Thanks again to Giulia, Alicia and Traci.

I am looking forward to next year already!