Recipe of the Week - Custard Creams

It's back to a sweet recipe again this week. I know most of my recipes so far have been sweet ones, but it's sweet things that are much harder to find when you are on a special diet and so they are much more appreciated.

These little biscuits are not like the Custard Cream biscuits you buy in the shops. The name comes from the fact that there is custard powder in the mix and butter-cream sandwiching them together. This is one of the many cakes/biscuits my mum used to make when we were growing up. I have adapted it to make it suitable for the boys' allergies. If you are wanting to make these with wheat-flour then the quantities are slightly different, so I have added these at the bottom.

Although there are three different stages to making these, don't let that put you off, as they are not time-consuming stages!

Firstly you will need:

8oz dairy-free margarine

3oz icing sugar

6oz Dove's Farm Wheat-Free Self Raising Flour

3tbsp Custard Powder*

-Beat the margarine and icing sugar well together with a mixer.

-Add the flour and custard powder and continue to mix until it is smooth, like a very soft dough consistency.

-Flour you hands well and make little balls of dough, placing them on a greased baking tray.

-Press down each ball gently with a fork. You don't want them to be too flat because they don't really rise when cooking. Don't squash them down on the tray too much either, or they will stick there after cooking.

-Bake in the oven at 170C for around 20 minutes, until they are lightly golden.

-Let the biscuits cool on the tray for about 10 minutes before gently lifting them onto a cooling rack.

Now you need:

 3oz dairy free chocolate

-Melt the chocolate.

-Once the biscuits are cool enough, usually only about 10 minutes after transferring them to the rack, dip the end of each biscuit into the chocolate.

-Place the biscuits onto a sheet of foil for the chocolate to set.

For the final stage I recommend Betty Crocker's Ready-Made Butter-Cream! 

The recipe for this butter-cream has recently changed and is now dairy-free. It's great to have on standby for things like this. You won't obviously need a whole tub for this, probably only a quarter. Keep the rest in the fridge for when you make a Victoria Sponge.

Back to the biscuits,

-Sandwich two biscuits together with about a teaspoon of butter-icing.

(If you would rather make your own icing then use about 2oz margarine and 6oz icing sugar.)

Footnotes:

*Make sure you use Custard Powder and not Instant Custard, which will have milk in it. I'm not sure if all brands of Custard Powder will be wheat & dairy free either, but I know that at the moment I am using Bird's Custard Powder which is suitable.

If you want to make this with wheat flour then use only:

6oz margarine

2oz icing sugar

6oz plain flour

2tbsp custard powder.

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