Custard Cream Button Biscuits

Custard Cream Buttons

I’ve been following Ed’s blog for a while now. He won the British Bake Off competition on TV in 2010. He also has a cookbook due out later this year. A few weeks ago he posted about custard creams that he had made, and they looked fabulous. Now, I have made custard creams before but they included cheap white fat, and I really didn’t like the mouth feel that this gave at the end of the biscuit. Ed used all butter in his, and I thought why not? – I’ve been meaning to play around with the white fat issue for ages now, because I do like a custard cream. In fact just typing this I fancy making them again – right this minute!

In Ed’s pictures the biscuits look like little button discs, one of the commenters on his post said so, and I thought so too. So I took this one small step further and marked them to look like actual buttons with a round cutter and a cocktail stick (pick) for the ‘holes’. The following recipe is the one Ed has on his blog, with the exception of some milk that I added to the filling. To see Ed’s neater piped filling, and quite honestly better pictures than mine do have a look at his post here. We really enjoyed these.

Custard Creams

225g plain flour

50g custard powder

30g icing sugar

175g unsalted butter, chilled and diced

1/4 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

Filling

50g unsalted butter, room temperature

200g icing sugar

2 tablespoons custard powder

25ml milk

(1) To make the biscuits place the flour, custard powder, icing sugar into the bowl of a food processor and pulse to combine. Add in the butter and vanilla bean paste and pulse until the mixture begins to come together. Tip the mixture out onto the work surface and bring together into a uniform mass with your hands. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

(2) Place the dough on a lightly floured work surface and roll to a thickness of 3-4mm. Cut out small rounds about 3cm in diameter, place on a Place on a baking parchment lined baking tray. Next mark half of them with the tines of a fork two or three times, not going all the way through. Now, to make the ‘buttons’ take a smaller circular cutter and press into the unmarked rounds, again not going all the way through. Finally take a cocktail stick and make 4 button holes in the center of the ‘buttons’. Refrigerate the trays for 15 minutes or until firm. Whilst chilling preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/350F. Bake the biscuits for 10 minutes or until just starting to colour around the edges. Cool on a wire rack.

(3) For the filling place the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and creamy about 5 minutes then slowly incorporate the icing sugar and custard powder and beat in high until smooth and fluffy. Beat in the 25ml of milk, if you think it needs it. To make it smooth and spreadable

(4) Spread the butter cream with a knife onto half of the biscuits, the plain half! Sandwiching them together with the top ‘button’ biscuits. Or Place the buttercream into a piping bag fitted with a small plain and pipe the filling instead.

Next Review up: Taste Le Tour