Custard Kisses or Rhubarb and Custard Kisses

I baked these on the weekend to take to work and baked another batch just before the school run this afternoon. They went down very well when my 3 daughters arrived home. I don't normally have custard powder in the house as I usually make custard from scratch but was given some by a neighbour a while ago, who was also given it but doesn't like custard at all, and thought I had better use it up. I remember eating these as a child, my Nana used to bake them in the school holidays. They were called various names in New Zealand, Yoyos or Melting Moments mostly and occasionally Custard Kisses. I've called them Custard Kisses because that is the most common name for these delicious delicate morsels here in the UK.

Custard Kisses

250g butter, softened

75g icing sugar

225g flour

35g custard powder

 35g cornflour

½ tsp baking powder

Filling:

50g butter, softened

240g icing sugar

3 Tbslp custard powder

1 tsp vanilla bean paste or 2 tsp vanilla extract

1-2 Tblsp hot water

  

Preheat your oven to 160C/140C Fan and line two baking trays with non-stick baking paper.

I would normally beat the butter and icing sugar until pale and fluffy then add the dry ingredients and gently mix until a dough forms.  Today however I was so tired I forgot decided to experiment and bunged everything into my stand mixer and mixed until a dough formed.  The biscuits turned out exactly how they always do, hurrah!..

Roll the mixture into small balls and put them on to the trays leaving a some room for the biscuits to spread a little.  The biscuits don’t spread too much but you don’t want a to end up with them running into each other.  Press the top of each balls of dough with a floured fork to flatten it slightly.  I pressed mine twice at different angles to make a square pattern but once is fine.

Bake the biscuits for 15 – 18  minutes or until the biscuits are firm and just starting to colour around the edges. Leave them to cool on the trays.  Once the biscuits are completely cool you can eat them on their own or sandwich them together with the filling.

To make the filling:

Mix together the butter, icing sugar, custard powder and vanilla then add the water a little at a time to adjust the consistency.  Sandwich similar sized biscuits together with the filling.

Rhubarb and Custard Kisses

As regular readers will know I have been bombarding my blog with rhubarb recipes to use up a glut from our recently acquired shared allotment.  I made some Rhubarb and Vanilla Jam and used it to sandwich these biscuits together along with the vanilla custard filling. They were delicious and the slightly tangy jam worked well with the rich custard biscuit and sweet filling.

I'm submitting these Kisses to the Alphabakes monthly blogging challenge hosted alternately by  The More than Occasional Baker and Caroline Makes.  The letter this month is K and Caroline is hosting.