Cream buttons

An early update from me this weekend as Mr CC and I are out and about having adventures and thus I won’t be at my computer. These little biscuits are great to have in your armoury – they are lovely just to eat, but you can also serve them on the side of a dessert to “glam it up”, or you can sandwich them with jam, nutella, or whipped cream and fruit. That’s a lot of options from one, rather plain looking, biscuit!

What attracted me to this recipe is that there is no sugar actually in the biscuit dough; the sugar is dredged over the dough once it is rolled out. Not only does this give the outside of the biscuit a pleasing crispness, but it also allows the cream to be the dominant flavour of the biscuit dough.

I wouldn’t make these biscuits any bigger – the ideal size is small enough to pop on your tongue and just feel it melt; the sugary crispness gives way to creamy crumbly biscuit and is divine! The texture is incredible – the biscuits puff a little while baking giving a layered texture like puff pastry.

The biscuits are small so you get quite a lot from a batch. They are also extremely easy to eat – they’re the kind of biscuit that you have with a cup of tea and then realise you’ve eaten half the batch! So save yourself time and heart ache and double the recipe up...but chill it in two bowls so it’s more manageable to roll out.

The aroma while these cooked was of warm cream; it reminded me of a oven baked, creamy rice pudding. Here they are ready to go into the oven – yes it looks a lot of sugar but remember, there’s no sugar in the dough:

Because of the unusual method of preparation and rolling, there is no option to re-roll unused dough. This forces you to be economical with your cutting out. Here’s what I had left over:

Ingredients

100g unsalted butter
2 tablespoon double cream
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
100g plain flour
6 tablespoons caster sugar

Method

Beat the butter until very soft and whippy.

Beat in the cream and vanilla, then stir in the flour.

Don’t panic – the dough will be incredibly soft!

Cover the bowl with clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 190°C/fan oven 170°C/375°F/Gas mark 5.

Line two baking sheets with baking paper.

Roll out the dough between two sheets of clingfilm. The dough needs to be thin – about 1/2cm thick.

The dough will soften and be sticky but gently peel the top sheet of clingfilm back and sprinkle 2-3 tablespoons of the caster sugar over the dough. The dough should be covered with sugar but so you can still see the dough through the sugar.

Place the clingfilm back over the dough and fold up the clingfilm edges.

Carefully flip the dough and clingfilm so that the sugared side is now underneath.

Peel back the clingfilm and sprinkle 2-3 tablespoons of the caster sugar over the dough. Once the dough is fully sugared you will experience no problems with cutting it and lifting it from the clingfilm.

Using a 4cm round cutter, cut out the dough and place the biscuits on the prepared baking sheet. Be economical with your cutting out as the dough does not lend itself to re-rolling.

Bake for 10 minutes or until the biscuits are golden and slightly puffed.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely before removing from the tray. Biscuits can be very fragile until they have cooled and you don’t want to risk breaking them.

Store in an airtight container.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.