Sweet
Gurabii (shortbread)
Crumbly butter shortbreads under a heavy dusting of icing sugar, baked for Christmas, Easter and family celebrations.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 30 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Total
- 55 min
- Fasting
- Not suitable
Ingredients 8 ingredients
Method
- Beat the butter on its own for a good eight to ten minutes, until it is pale and the volume has visibly increased. This is the whole recipe: the lightness comes from the beating, not from the raising agent.
- Beat in the egg yolks, the 40 g of icing sugar, the rakija, the vanilla, the baking powder and the salt.
- Sift the flour over the bowl and fold it in with a spatula, stopping the moment the dough comes together. Worked any further, it bakes hard.
- Rest the dough, covered, for fifteen minutes. Heat the oven to 175°C.
- Roll the dough into balls the size of a walnut, set them well apart on a lined tray and press each one flat to about a centimetre with the base of a glass.
- Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. They should be barely coloured, a pale gold at the edge only. Browned gurabii are overbaked ones.
- Leave them on the tray until completely cold; warm, they fall apart. Then sift the remaining icing sugar over them in a thick layer.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- Rakija
- Brandy, whisky or a dry vermouth; a tablespoon of milk if you would rather leave the alcohol out.
- Home-rendered lard, as in the older versions
- Butter, as here — the crumb is a little less short but the flavour is cleaner.
- Vanilla sugar in sachets
- One teaspoon of vanilla extract, or the seeds of half a pod.
