Brown butter pecan shortbread

Back home there is a very old fashioned grinder we used when grinding nuts for certain pastries. It is attached to a table top and lets you by hand grind nuts or coffee in to fine powder. Nuts and coffee can of course be bought ground already but there is something special about making things on your own. At a recent trip to Stockholm I came across one on these grinders in a little old style hard ware shop. I bought it and brought it back to Ireland and was very eager to try it out. Having a bag of pecan nuts in my cup board i decided to grind them into fine powder, toast it and use in a brown butter short bread biscuit. The result; lovely crumbly biscuits with a rich flavour of nutty butter and sweet toasted pecans. Go on and try it.

100 grams butter
50 grams brown sugar
150 grams plain flour
50 grams pecans
1 large egg yolk

Melt butter in a pot, let it start to foam and smell nutty. When the colour in brown take of the heat and let cool down.
Grind pecan nuts and toast in a dry hot pan until golden in colour. Let cool down.
Beat sugar and butter until fluffy and pale, add egg yolk, pecans and flour. Knead quickly into a dough. Roll out to a square about 1cm thick. Prick with a fork and score little rectangular biscuits in the dough with a sharp knife. Bake for 30-35min on 160C. Sprinkle with caster sugar just after it comes out of the oven. Let cool down before cutting in to biscuits.