So as the whole of the UK gears up for GBBO (the Great British Bake Off's new series) tonight, we've been promised the most eclectic bunch of contestants yet. And with a special mathematical formula, predictions are that Flora and Nadiya will be going head to head in the final. And we haven't even met them yet!!!! Ooh err! The excitement. I, for one, will be firmly glued to my TV screen :)
It seemed timely with the launch of the new series, to honour one of the previous winners, Jo Wheatley. The boys and I love going to the library to pick up new books for them to read and during our visit last week, I spied Jo's Home Baking book on the shelves and decided to treat myself to a book of my own. She has lots of tasty home-cooked recipes that would make wonderful family dishes, but I decided to pick something that the boys could help me with - and we always love biscuits in our house.
The words Viennese Swirls and Custard Creams take me back to my childhood and even though they are still around today, it's been years since I had one. I knew the boys would enjoy making them too and it takes very few ingredients to make these delightful little treats (most of them store cupboard items if you're lucky).
Both biscuits are very simple to make and therefore lend themselves well to baking with young children, but really tasty and very satisfying to produce lovely little biscuity treats with relative ease. I found the Viennese Swirls quite crumbly when baked so you need to be careful when dipping them into the melted chocolate in case they disintegrate in hand (but this just leads to little mouths full of biscuity crumbs during the preparation so it isn't all bad!) The Custard Creams really do taste like the ones I used to get from the shops but with a slightly more yellowy tinged cream (accentuated by the custard powder).
These are fun to make and really do taste like the real thing. Call me nostalgic, but I love yummy things like this that take me back to my younger years.
And they are just perfect with a cup of tea:)
Viennese Swirls Makes 10 (from Jo Wheatley's Home Baking)
Ingredients
- 100G UNSALTED BUTTER, SOFTENED
- 25G ICING SUGAR
- 1 TSP VANILLA
- 100G PLAIN FLOUR
- 1 TSP CORNFLOUR
- 1/4 TSP BAKING POWDER
- 100G MILK CHOCOLATE
Method
- Preheat the oven to 170 degrees (fan)
- Line a baking tray with parchment
- Beat the butter and icing sugar in a bowl until pale and light
- Add the vanilla and mix again
- Sift the flour, cornflour and baking powder into the bowl and then mix until combined
- Spoon the dough into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle
- Pipe 10cm lines onto the baking tray leaving a little space between each of them
- Bake for 10-15 mins until pale golden
- Remove from oven and leave to cool for 5 mins
- Then transfer them to a cooling rack (they are quite fragile at this stage so be gentle and using a tool like a palette knife will help)
- When the biscuits are completely cooled down, melt the chocolate in the microwave
- Then dip both ends of each biscuit into the chocolate and leave to set on a piece of parchment paper
Custard Creams Makes 10 (from Jo Wheatley's Home Baking)
Biscuit Ingredients
- 100G UNSALTED BUTTER, SOFTENED
- 50G CASTER SUGAR
- 100G PLAIN FLOUR
- 25G CUSTARD POWDER
- 25G CORNFLOUR
Custard Cream Filling
- 150G ICING SUGAR
- 45G UNSALTED BUTTER, SOFTENED
- 20G CUSTARD POWDER
- 3 TSP MILK
Method
- First make the biscuits by beating the butter and sugar in a bowl until light and fluffy
- Sift the flour, custard powder and cornflour into the bowl and combine the ingredients until smooth
- Wrap the dough in clingfilm and refrigerate for 20 mins
- Turn the oven on to 170 degrees (fan) and line a baking sheet with baking paper
- Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface until it's around 4mm thick
- Using your cutter of choice, stamp out your little biscuits and place them gently on the prepared baking tray
- Re-roll any un-used dough and cut out more biscuits
- Chill them in the fridge for 10 mins
- Bake them in the oven for 10-12 minutes
- Remove from oven and allow to cool for 5 mins before placing them on the cooling tray
- Allow them to cool completely while you make your custard filling
- Place all the custard cream ingredients in a mixing bowl and combine until smooth
- Place the cream in a piping bag fitted with a 1cm round nozzle and pipe a circle of the cream onto one half of the quantity of biscuits
- Sandwich them together with the remaining biscuits
- And enjoy :)