Moreish cookies go amazingly well with a cup of coffee or tea, but they’re even sweeter heart-shaped and filled with custard.
“They’re not difficult to make and wonderful to eat,” promised Nigella Lawson. Plus, they’re “heavenly,” he added.
Adding to the cuteness are the little bumps bordered around the heart-based cookie, which Nigella Lawson achieves with heart cutters and a corn cob holder.
“This is my patented tool for making point holes, like the pretty stitches around the edges of each heart,” she said of the corn cob holder.
Here’s how to make Nigella Lawson’s Homemade Custard Cream Cookies.
Vanilla sauce heart cookies
Makes: 14 cookies
Ingredients
For the cookies:
- 175 g plain flour
- Three tablespoons of Bird’s original custard powder
- One teaspoon of baking powder
- 50 g unsalted butter
- 50 g vegetable shortening (like Trex)
- Three tablespoons of powdered sugar
- One big egg
- One tablespoon of milk or more for binding
For the custard:
- One tablespoon of Bird’s original custard powder
- 100 g powdered sugar
- 50 g soft unsalted butter
- One teaspoon of boiling water
Method
Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan/gas mark four).
For making cookies
Put the flour, custard and baking powder in the processor and mix.
Add cubed butter and vegetable broth in teaspoonful pieces and cut the flour into a crumb mixture.
Pour in the sugar and Pulse again and beat the egg and a tablespoon of milk together. With the motor running, pour the processor down the funnel until it clumps into a ball.
Shape the dough into a ball, press it into a fat plate, wrap it in cling film and let it rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.
Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface into a 4 mm thick disc. Dip a 5cm heart-shaped cutter into the flour, then cut out your shape.
Prick the outer edge of each heart all the way from one side into a corn cob holder (or other pointed instrument).
Bake on a baking sheet for 15 minutes and let the cookies cool on a wire rack before spreading them.
For making custard
Place the custard powder and icing sugar in a food processor and pulse briefly to combine and froth. Add butter and boil until you get a smooth cream. Add a teaspoon of boiling water and pulse again.
Sandwich each cookie with about a teaspoon of custard cream by carefully spreading a layer of cream on the uncut side of the cookie and waving a suitable surface over it.
