Chocolate dipped shortcake

One of the first things I remember making in school cookery lessons were Viennese shortcake fingers, so with boundless confidence I set about repeating my  earlier success. I dutifully followed a recipe in my standby book (1001 Cupcakes, Cookies & other tempting treats, ed Susannah Tee, pub. Paragon books, 2009) and was slightly alarmed at how sloppy the mixture seemed. So, I added more flour. When I then came to pour the mixture into a forcing bag to pipe on to the baking tray, I realised why the mixture needed to be looser as my dough stuck in the forcing bag and with no amount of effort could I get it to come out of the nozzle and form a nice ridged finger on the plate. Failure. So, I had to dig the mixture out of the piping bag, roll little nugget-sized pieces into little balls, press a fork over the top (to try to emulate the interest of the planned-for finger), put them in the oven and keep my fingers crossed. Hmm. They were rather short, not very sweet and just about rescued by being dipped in melted chocolate. Below is what they should have looked like. Miraculously all my biscuits were eaten but that may be because a)all the church goers were too polite &/or b)because we had the Annual Parochial Church Meeting shortly afterwards. 

Chocolate-dipped Viennese fingers (from ‘1001 Cupcakes, Cookies & other tempting treats’ ed. Susannah Tee; pub. paragon Books, 2009)

Below is the embroidered tablecloth just visible under my plate of shortbread. My mother embroidered it when she was young and I have always loved it. Sadly, it never gets much of an outing as it’s a difficult size. It is such a simple design with knobbly french knots as stamens and the little patches of cut work in between the flowers.

Embroidered linen tablecloth