Tuesday 3 March 2015

Custard creams

This recipe is from the River Cottage Handbook No. 8 : Cakes by Pam Corbin.
I have had very good comments about these custard creams so here is the recipe.

Variations: Jammy dodgers; remove the custard powder in the mixture and instead of the custard filling just use any jam of your choice.

Bourbon biscuits; instead of custard powder in the main mixture, use cocoa powder or drinking chocolate powder.
Instead of making a custard filling, just make the same thing but with either drinking chocolate powder or cocoa powder.

Ingredients (for the main dough):
175g of plain flour
75g of icing sugar
125g of salted butter (or unsalted and add a pinch of salt) cut into small cubes
1 egg yolk
1tbsp of custard powder

Ingredients (for the custard filling):
75g of softened unsalted butter
75g of icing sugar
25g custard powder

Equipment:
2 large baking trays, lined with baking parchment
Plain or crinkled cutter (choose your desired size, I would go with small -medium)
Heart, square, animal shape or any other of your choice (make sure that half of the biscuits are slightly bigger than the other half)

Directions:
Firstly, sift the flour, salt, custard powder and icing sugar into a large mixing bowl.

Then, add the butter and rub together until it becomes like breadcrumbs. Next, add the egg yolk and work it together until it becomes a smooth dough.

Leave it in the fridge for 25 - 30 minutes wrapped in cling film.
(You can do all this by hand or you can simply put all of the ingredients for the dough into a food processor and  blitz until it is a dough.)

Preheat the oven to Gas mark 3 (170°C). Divide the dough into two equal portions. Roll out one portion until it is about the thickness of about two fifty pence pieces.
Cut out the base rounds and then do the same with the tops (the other portion of dough) but cut them out with the slightly larger cutter.

Lay them gently onto the trays and bake them in the oven for 15 - 20 minutes or  until golden brown and crisp.

Meanwhile, beat together the ingredients for the custard filling in a medium sized bowl until creamy and smooth.

Sandwich the biscuits together using a pallette knife to spread the custard filling.
Then I decided to sprinkle them with icing sugar.

And then feel free to enjoy your biscuits!

Many thanks,
Rosie