Apparently the custard cream is the UK’s favourite biscuit. Nine out of ten people voted for it out of a group of 7000 people.
The custard cream has been around for over 100 years. It was first made in 1908 and the swirly baroque design of ferns goes back to Victorian Times, the Victorians thought baroque ferns were really cool. This recipe is from my APP Cupcakes, Muffins and Afternoon Tea available to download for £2.99 from the APP store on iPad.
It is a little known fact human’s incisor teeth are specially adapted to prize apart the two biscuits of the custard cream so you can eat the cream layer in the middle first. The skill is not to break the biscuits until you’ve cleaned off all the cream.
Ingredients: makes approx 12-14 biscuits
200g plain flour
3 tablespoons Birds custard powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
50g butter
50g white fat eg, Trex or lard
100g caster sugar
1 egg
a little milk
For the custard cream:
1 tablespoon Bird’s custard powder
120g icing sugar
50g soft butter a little warm milk
- Preheat the oven to 180c/gas mark 4 (Aga – Roasting oven on bottom set of runners).
- Place the flour, custard powder, baking powder, butter and white fat into a bowl and rub in the fat to the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs
- Add the sugar, mix to combine. Add the egg and mix to a dough, if it’s too crumbly add a little milk. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill for 20 minutes.
- Roll out the dough on a floured board and either cut into same-sized rectangles or use a cookie cutter to cut out an even number of shapes. For 14 custard creams you will need 28 biscuits as you need two biscuits per custard cream. I used a sugarpaste fondant stamp to imprint some roses on the outside of my biscuits, it’s not the same as the classic ferns but it looks nice.
- Place the biscuits on a greased and lined baking tray and cook for 10-15 minutes, leave to cool before sandwiching them together.
- To make the filling, combine the custard powder and icing sugar, add the butter and cream together, adding 1 teaspoon of warm milk if needed.
- Sandwich the biscuits together using around 1 teaspoon of filling, be careful not to break the biscuits when you’re sandwiching them