Mass (Catering) Panic

March 28th - Saturday morning should be a day of rest and relaxation...coffee with friends, a bit of food shopping, and maybe even checking out a cookbook to see what you want to make for Sunday dinner. However my husband was organising a fundraising dinner for a school expedition and was bemoaning the fact that there were no brandy baskets to go with the cranachan.  At this point I should have just nodded and agreed...but instead said that shortbread goes really well with cranachan.  There was just that look...and then I heard myself say that I could make some.  Shortbread for 100! And I'd only ever made one disastrous shortbread before.  However I'd just been given a recipe from a colleague at work - her shortbread is fab - and there it was at the bottom of my bag on a post-it.  I had the ingredients but no method so apologies Mary Berry but this is what I did.  First I put 3 blocks of butter and 12oz of icing sugar in a bowl and attacked it with a hand mixer.  That was my first mistake - I was covered in icing sugar and the kitchen windows were covered in blobs of butter!  Undeterred I fished out the butter and softened it a bit first before adding the icing sugar.  Then I weighed out 12oz of cornflour and 24oz of plain flour.  I only added a bit of this at a time and ended up finishing mixing it by hand.  The cooking was a bit hit and miss with timing - some were a bit overdone...but those that were a pale golden tasted great.  So if you need a sneaky wee shortbread recipe this one is really good and if I can manage it so can you!