Peanut butter cookies with honey buttercream

Its the weekend, its cold and rainy and I'm feeling a little poorly, so sitting on the sofa and watching telly, craving comfort food (again!). So I had a little ponder in my baking cupboard and was going to just make some peanut butter cookies on their own, then thought it would be much more tastier to make it with a cream filling... hmm, but what? I've read somewhere that peanut butter and honey is the new version of the peanut butter and jelly / syrup combo and they're not wrong. Its quite the match made in a dream baker's heaven. The ever so slight salty crunch of the peanut butter in the biscuit combined with the sweet buttercream makes this sound rather ambiguous, but honestly it works!

St Patrick's Day green velvet cupcakes and shamrock cookies

Yes, I'm aware that this post is a few days late; one day I'll make it on time. In all fairness I did make the goods before St Patrick's Day, does that count? And I've been a bit busy, packing up and moving from the countryside to north London and then unpacking and getting used to a new kitchen (and new oven, which does now work). All these things take time, and yes, good things come to those who wait!  Haha, pun intended and yes I did get to enjoy some guinness over the weekend.

So, green velvet cupcakes... my goodness. What a pilaver. I ran out of green colouring and it ended up looking like pond green sludge. But from the outside it still looks alright, well sort of. Had to hide the cupcakes with lots of yummy cream cheese frosting. But the main thing is, they tasted amazing.

Not to forget the shamrock cookies, the dough I used, meant that you have to chill them overnight. So that took some time, but you know what, sandwiched together with buttercream frosting and these little beauties are worth all the time spent.

1st birthday duck and flower chocolate cupcakes

Ok, so its not every day your boss - a senior partner in a firm asks you to make cupcakes for his daughter's first birthday, so naturally I was over the moon excited as they chose my cupcakes over a well known bakery in London! The brief was ducks and flowers, which personally I thought is just too cute!

Bubble bath duckies

The cupcakes are chocolate but with vanilla icing in a variety of colours. For the fondant icing, you can purchase a box of multicolour fondant icing which makes life so much easier, or you can use white and use food colouring to create your own variety, for this I used purple!

'Wear It Pink' ribbon cookies and cupcakes in aid of breast cancer campaign

I don't really care for pink, I'm more into darker colours like black and purple - but this was for a good cause, so i thought, heck why not. So instead of wearing a pink cardigan or shirt like everyone else, I wore pink floral tights and black shirt and skirt, ha!

I thought I'd get involved this year - I did the 'Race for Life' like erm.. a few good years ago, so this is my contribution to fighting cancer - with cupcakes and cookies!

I don't have a proper ribbon cookie cutter, but its quite easy to make a stencil and just use that to cut around the cookie dough. But it does take aaages! That's dedication or so I've been told...

I could have used the standard sugar cookie recipe, but I wanted these to be crisp and crunchy and also because the royal icing on these cookies can make the sugar cookies a bit soft, which you don't really want. I had lots of fun with these as you can see...

Homemade Custard Creams

Crunchy!

The beloved custard cream - a very typically British biscuit that is an all time favourite, with its identifiable ornate design and shape. Apparently this biscuit is so adored, it was voted Britain's favourite biscuit in a recent poll, I can't remember but I probably voted for them at the time.

I did some investigating just to find out about the history of the custard cream - but there really wasn't anything much on the internet. Isn't that just so sad, I mean this biscuit looks posh, admit it, its been around for a long time and it must have been created for some purpose. I can just imagine a Victorian tea party with a few of these biscuits on the side of a rather elegant gold rimmed teacup saucer. I've always wanted to recreate these and I don't know why it took me so long, they're quick and easy and absolutely delicicous, with just the right amount of crunch. Addition of baroque pattern optional!

Ingredients for the biscuits:-

115g unsalted butter
75g castor sugar
175g all-purpose flour
8 tblsp custard powder
1tsp vanilla extract

Filling:-

75g unsalted butter
1tsp vanilla extract
150g icing sugar
3 tblsp custard powder
2 tblsp milk

Method:-

Preheat the oven to 180C Gas Mark 4.

Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Fold in the flour, custard powder and vanilla essence until you have a dough that you can roll out. You will need to get stuck in and use your hands for this!

Flour a worktop surface and roll out your dough to a thickness of 1/2cm. Cut the dough into whatever shapes you want ensuring that you have an even number of each shapes. Custard creams are traditionally square but I just used a round cutter - it was either that or a heart shape, which probably isn't that appropriate!

Other brand baking trays are available..

Place your biscuits on a baking tray, I just greased the tray with butter and flour and then bake for 10 minutes until just before golden brown. Leave to cool for a couple of minutes before transfering to a cooling rack.

To make the filling, cream the butter and vanilla together and gradually add the sugar and custard powder until you have something with the consistency of buttercream icing or frosting. Add milk and transfer to a piping bag, this is so much easier to make the sandwiches filling. When the biscuits are cool, gently sandwich them together, I started on the outside and worked in a swirl with the filling. This makes them neater when joined with the other half - presentation and all that!

Ready for my close-up..

Best enjoyed with a strong cup of tea! These absolutely went down a treat at work and I am rather pleased with them. I will definitely be making these again, I'm just not so sure I can actually eat the real custard creams now!

Why yes, I do like this plate thank you!