a recipe for successful biscuits

Lestrade's Mum's Italian Shortbread

3 cups flour

1 cup icing sugar

1 cup olive oil

(optional, but tasty: 1/4 tsp salt and 1 tsp vanilla)

Combine all ingredient into a dough ball. At first this will seem impossible, but it will come together eventually. It's easier if you use your hands and still easier if you use two children to do it for you.

(Also optional: divide into 2-4 small balls and flavor with...whatever. Below you can see one of our balls contains tiny pieces of chocolate that Sherlock created with two bars of Flake, a plastic bag, and a rubber mallet. The other we left plain. Lestrade says you can use almost anything, but that too much liquid will make the dough turn into a batter, which is not optimal.)

Wrap them up and put them in the fridge to chill for one hour. During this time, take the dogs for a vigorous run in the park to work off all the spilled icing sugar they hoovered up off the floor before you could stop them. This is also beneficial because it stops the children opening the fridge door every ten seconds to see if the dough is done yet.

When you get back, heat up the oven to 200C (400F). While it's doing that, roll out your dough balls. They should end up about 1/4 inch thick. You can cut them into squares with a knife, or circles with a drinking glass, or you can use a heart shaped cutter provided by your boyfriend, the mad baker, who may have let slip that he has a minor collection of these. Look askance at him, but say nothing, because he puts up with a lot from you.

If your heart is enormous and your balls are relatively small, you will have to cut out as many hearts as you can, gather up the scraps left behind, and roll them out again. Repeat until you've used up the dough.

Place your hearts, or squares, or circles (or shamrocks, crescent moons, umbrellas ??) on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for 8 minutes. While it is probably safe to let your five year old put them in the oven, with supervision, do not, for the love of god and your already sugar-high dogs, let him get them out. (Sherlock's fine. The dogs may never sleep again.)

Let cool for a minute or two and scoop them onto a cooling rack.

Tomorrow: glazes and the enormous mess you can make with them.