Custard Shortbread
I don’t know about anyone else, but I remember school puddings with great fondness. I’d often skip past the pasta, hot lunch, and sandwiches in my canteen and just have pudding for my lunch. While I have since managed to control my sweet tooth and will happily eat a sandwich for lunch, I still can’t quite ignore the nostalgic itch for vanilla concrete and custard (a shortbread and custard pudding!).
For those unfamiliar with the perhaps unappealingly titled concrete and custard: it was a square of vanilla shortbread topped with warm vanilla custard (which I sometimes even preferred cold!). To me, this was the perfect dessert given my vanilla (and sugar) obsession.
In the present, several years post school canteen, I was thinking about cornflour being a foundational ingredient in shortbread. Cornflour is also the foundational ingredient in custard powder. Excited by this connection, I took my lunch break to experiment.
I found that since custard powder really is mostly cornflour, the other ingredients were in such low quantities that they shouldn’t drastically alter the shortbread. I used Bird’s Custard Powder here for ultimate nostalgia!
Twenty minutes later, the house smelt of concrete and custard, and I was left with little custard-coloured shortbread rounds. They have the vanilla-eggy, rich flavour of custard with the melting crumb of shortbread, and are fab with a cup of tea. Perhaps the most British of my recipes yet! They have a slight powdery taste that the child in me - who used to try to inhale the powdery air that smoked up when the custard powder was opened - loved!
These are a super quick bake with ingredients that most British households already have in the cupboard!
Custard Shortbread
Ingredients:
• 225g room temperature unsalted butter
• 110g caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla paste
• 225g plain flour
• 110g Bird’s Custard Powder
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 170°C fan.
2. Line two large baking trays with baking parchment.
3. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy, then add the vanilla.
4. Sift in the flour and custard powder, and mix until just combined.
5. Transfer the dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll to a half-inch thickness.
6. Using a 2–3 inch diameter circular biscuit cutter, cut biscuits from the dough and transfer to the baking trays. Reroll the dough and continue cutting until little or none is left.
7. Place the biscuits on the middle shelves of the oven and bake for 10 minutes, then rotate the trays and bake for a further 10 minutes.
8. Remove from the oven when the edges are lightly golden, depending on the thickness and size of your biscuits, the cooking time may vary, so keep an eye on them!
9. Leave to cool on a wire rack and, once cool, enjoy!
These will last for up to two weeks in an airtight container!