eat with a cup of tea fennel, orange and pistachio slice and bake shortbread cookies

these are soft and delicious

feel free to swap the flavourings around - but I loved this combination

Fennel, orange, pistachios. Very nice.

220g butter

60g icing sugar

zest of two oranges

2 tbsp orange juice

280g flour

pinch of sea salt

75g pistachios, chopped

2 tsp fennel seeds, roughly crushed in a mortar and pestle

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well until you get a soft dough. I did all of this in a standing mix-master, however I suspect it would have been more straight forward and simple in a food processor.

Put the dough onto plastic wrap, shape into a log (mine always ends up square edged) and chill for at least 2 hours. At this stage you could divide it into two logs and freeze one for later.

Preheat the oven to 170C. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and slice into 0.5cm biscuits. Arrange on trays on baking paper. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until lightly golden around the edges.