Custard Cream Easter

I love Nigella's Custard Cream Hearts. I had never heard of these cookies until Nigella. Actually, I'm not so much of a cookie girl and prefer a nice slice of cake or a good muffin over a cookie any day. These are an exception though. How can you not like a sweet, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth kinda cookie??? This past Valentine's Day I let Kirstie make them herself. All I basically did was help with the big stuff, like the oven settings and measuring for example. They came out really nice but just a bit thick, which means I got less. Boohoo! This time I decided to make them as a treat for Kirstie myself so I made them a wee bit thinner. Since it's Easter, I thought I'd make them in some fun Easter shapes like bunnies, chicks and eggs. I needed a good excuse to use the lovely cutters Kathryn sent me as well, you see! By the way, thanks again, Kathryn!! Here are the results. Same lovely cookies, just a new shape...oh, and as you can see, I tinted the cream with a squirt of bright pink to make the cookies extra cute!

Here's the recipe: (PS: See, Karin...I followed your advice!)

Custard Cream Hearts (or Chicks, Eggs and Bunnies!)

Ingredients

Biscuits:
175g Plain Flour
3tbsp Birds Custard Powder
1tsp Baking Powder
50g Unsalted Butter
50g Vegetable Shortening
3tbsp Caster Sugar
1 Egg
1tbsp Milk

Custard:
1tbsp Birds Custard Powder
100g Icing Sugar
50g Soft Unsalted Butter
1tsp Boiling Water

Method

Makes 14 biscuits

Preheat oven to Gas Mark 4/180c

To make the biscuits, put the flour, custard powder and baking powder into a processor and pulse to mix. Add the butter, cut into smallish cubes and the vegetable shortening in mounded tsps and pulse to cut into the flour to create a crumbly mixture.

Tip in the sugar and pulse again. Beat the egg and tbsp milk together. Pour down the funnel of the processor with the engine running until it clumps into a ball. (Go cautiously, you may not need all of the egg and milk or you may need to add more milk to make it come together).

Form the dough into a ball and press down into a fat disc, wrap in cling film and rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Roll out dough onto a lightly floured surface to a thickness of 4mm. Dip a 5cm heart shaped cutter in flour and cut out your shapes. You need an even number of hearts to sandwich together.

Prick the outside edge of each heart all the way around on one side with a corn on the cob holder. Cook on a lined baking sheet for 15 minutes, and then leave to cool before sandwiching them.

To make the custard cream, put the custard powder and icing sugar into the processor and pulse briefly to combine and de-lump.

Add the butter and blitz together until you get a smooth cream. Add the tsp of boiling water and pulse again.

Sandwich each biscuit with about 1tsp of custard cream by gently spreading a layer of cream over the unpricked side of a biscuit and then wiggling a matching top on it.

Enjoy!


NOTE: I didn't use corn on the cob holders to make the edges this time. Too comlplicated with these shapes!!