Custard and “Jelly” Biscuits

These biscuits are a combination of my favourite things: lovely crumbly, almost melt-in-your-mouth custard biscuits, sandwiched with a raspberry buttercream.

There are some recipes, which hold a really nostalgic spot in our hearts (and tummies). This one is linked to these custard biscuits which my aunt used to bake for us growing up. To this day, I happily return from my trips to visit family in Durban, armed with a stash of these in my hand luggage.

I love dipping the custard biscuits into warm tea. Her version is a bit firmer than the one I share below, and a great conduit for soaking up the tea and softening the biscuit, whilst still leaving them slightly crumbly.

They are super simple to make and require only six ingredients, most of which will be readily available in your pantry. As a happy accident, they also do not require any eggs, so are perfect for those auspicious occasions when we are abstaining from eggs (and other meat).

My aunt’s version stops there – wonderful in its simplicity. I however wanted to take it a step further and wanted to modernise these humble custard morsels into a delicious sandwich cookie. I was cleaning out our cupboards the other day and came across boxes of jelly – one of Linsen’s ultimate childhood pleasures – served with a generous helping of UltraMel custard, of course! This gave me the idea to combine these custard biscuits with a “jelly” buttercream. Technically, us South African’s classify jelly’s very differently to American’s – and the filling is more of a jam, but I decided I liked the ring to the name so just went with it 🙂

I had some roasted strawberries at home, so I used them in the sandwiching too, but you can use a store bought jam of your choice. You could even make a vanilla buttercream, or leave it out completely. These biscuits are delicious, with or without being sandwiched. On making these again, I spotted a Rhubarb jam in the fridge which came all the way from Harrods in London, so I used that to fill these delicious biscuits.

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CUSTARD BISCUITS

• 200g salted butter, in 2cm cubes at room temperature
• 70g icing sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 150g cake flour
• 50g maizena/cornflour
• 70g custard powder
• pinch of salt

METHOD

1. Pre-heat the oven to 160˚ C. Line three baking trays with baking paper.
2. Cream the butter, icing sugar and vanilla for about two to three minutes. You know this is done when the butter turns a shade lighter.
3. Then add in the flour, custard powder and cornflour and gently fold through by hand until a soft dough is formed. I know it will initially feel like the dough is too crumbly and sandy, but it does come together. If you need to, very gently “knead” it with your hands just to bring it away from the sides of the bowl and into a single cohesive dough. Resist the urge to use a hand mixer here, as it may lose some of that crumbly, tender feel as it bakes.
4. Divide the dough into 15g balls. You will end up with about 30 – 35 halves, which when sandwiched should give you around 15 biscuits.
5. Place the balls on the lined baking tray, spaced at least 3cm apart. The biscuits do spread slightly when baking.
6. Dip the back prongs of a fork in flour, dust off any excess flour, and press down onto each biscuit. Don’t flatten them too much, just enough to make an indentation. The height of the flattened cookies should be at least 1cm or even 1.25cm’s.
7. Bake for 20 minutes. You want the biscuits’ bottoms to be just set, but not brown too much and become dark. Start checking them at around 18 minutes – the exact time will depend on your oven.
8. Once baked, remove the biscuits from the oven and leave them to cool on the tray for 5 minutes – they will still be quite fragile to handle.
9. After the 5 minutes, place the biscuits on a cooling rack to cool completely. Only sandwich the cookies once completely cool.

BERRY BUTTERCREAM

• 30g salted butter at room temperature
• 60g icing sugar
• 1 Tablespoon raspberry/strawberry jam
• more jam, as needed to fill the center

METHOD

1. Cream the butter for 1 minute.
2. Add in the icing sugar and continue to cream for another minute.
3. Add in raspberry jam (or another berry jam) and mix until incorporated.
4. Once the biscuits are cooled, sandwich pairs of biscuits with buttercream. You can make a ring of buttercream around the biscuit, if you like and fill the center with more jam.

Recipe by adventureswithsugar.com