Marbled Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies

This week I’ve been both incredibly busy and frustrated, immersed in the world of house hunting. After many months of waiting , I’ve finally been offered a job and now have to relocate before I start next week. So you might think that I’d have been too busy to write and bake a recipe this week – but would I do that to you?

So we’re talking brownies and to be precise, marbled chocolate cheesecake brownies. You may be asking why get the cheesecake involved and not just do normal chocolate brownies but I find that most people have a favourite chocolate brownie recipe and they’re pretty easy to come across, so you don’t need mine. I definitely have a favourite brownie recipe and I’ve been making it for years! I first introduced them to the world a depressingly large number of years ago while still at school where they were very popular and have been making them, usually by request, ever since. Now, for some reason I’ve always kept this recipe a closely guarded secret and now I feel like I cannot change, therefore you probably won’t ever see it here.  Today’s brownie recipe though is still really delicious so I hope you like it!

These recipes are not exactly your traditional brownies though and I’m going to begin with this warning – if you don’t like cheesecake, you’re probably not going to like these brownies!! Although if you don’t like cheesecake, I’m not sure I want you reading this blog anyway – what’s wrong with you?? Oh, you have a dairy allergy?? Then you shouldn’t be eating chocolate either!!! Actually thinking about it, what do you do if you have a dairy allergy and want to make a recipe that contains chocolate? Can you just substitute the chocolate for dairy free chocolate?? Does it melt and bake the same?? So many questions that I’m going to have to find out the answer to!

Anyway, if you do like both chocolate and cheesecake then these are the brownies for you! I wasn’t sure what to expect when I was experimenting with these, but what came out was something that tasted a little like chocolate cheesecake on a brownie rather than biscuit base. Accept that this is what they’ll taste like and you’ll love them. They’re moist and tangy and chocolatey and great – try them! And for those of you who don’t like cheesecake – you crazy bunch – the chocolate brownie part of the recipe makes lovely brownies by itself so you can always have a go at this is you prefer!

Finally before I go, there may not be a recipe posted next week due to the moving, the new job, my probable lack of internet and probable lack of kitchen! I’ll see what I can do!

Some Final Tips Before You Get Started:

• I always melt my chocolate in a bain-marie (ok, a Pyrex bowl balanced over a saucepan of water) but if you don’t want to fuss with this you can always melt your butter and chocolate in the microwave. Just be careful not to burn it by microwaving at a fairly low temperature and taking it out frequently to stir until fully melted.
• Make sure your mixture has cooled sufficiently before you add the eggs. Adding the sugar and flour prior to the eggs should lower the temperature enough but just double check, otherwise you’ll end up with chocolate scrambled eggs. Not ideal.
• I used a standard, supermarket bar of dark chocolate for these which I’m guessing had a fairly low cocoa content because that’s what I prefer for brownies. This is what I’d suggest but if you prefer a more bitter chocolate, say 75% cocoa chocolate when you bake, by all means use it!
• Once baked, unlike normal cakes, a testing skewer inserted into the brownies shouldn’t necessarily come out clean when checking to see if they’ve cooked all the way through. You still want it to be very slightly sticky in order for your brownies to be moist. If it comes out covered in batter however, they still need more cooking time. Go with your gut on this one.

Marbled Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies

For the Cream Cheese Mixture:

400g Full Fat Cream Cheese

1tsp. Vanilla Extract

125g Caster Sugar

2 Eggs

For the Brownies:

200g Dark Chocolate

175g Unsalted Butter

300g Caster Sugar

130g Plain Flour

3 Eggs

A 30cm x 20cm Rectangular Baking Tin

1)      Preheat the oven to 180◦C, grease and line your baking tin with greaseproof paper. In a large bowl, cream together the cream cheese, vanilla extract, caster sugar and eggs. Stir until smooth, creamy and well combined. Set aside in a cool place.

2)      Place a large heatproof bowl over a saucepan filled with an inch of water, making sure the base of the bowl is not touching the water. Bring the water to boil over a medium heat. Break the chocolate into chunks and place, alongside the butter into the heatproof bowl and melt together, stirring occasionally. Leave to cool slightly once melted.

3)      Mix the sugar and flour into the melted chocolate and butter and stir until combined. Add the eggs and little at a time, mixing until a wet mixture has formed.

4)      Pour ¾ of the brownie mixture into the prepared tin. On top of this, place dollops of the cream cheese mixture before filling the gaps between these with the remaining brownie mixture. Using a skewer, swirl together the cream cheese and brownie until a marbled pattern is created. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes or until the cheesecake is golden and a skewer inserted into the mixture comes out slightly sticky.

5)      Leave to cool completely in the tin before removing and cutting the brownies into bars.

Toffee Apple Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

This week I’m making a request. Several weeks ago, I made my way to London with the noble intention of going to a party and while there I met up with many of my friends, all of whom are now living fabulous lives in the capital city, and a specific request was made as to what recipe should feature in this blog one week. This request was to write a recipe that involved apples.

Now, that in itself does not really narrow my task down, as apples are a deservedly popular ingredient in the baking world.  Pies, biscuits, tarts, cakes, muffins – they really are incredibly versatile and almost always delicious. After much deliberation though, I have decided to go for an apple cupcake with some toffee sauce and cream cheese frosting thrown in for good measure. It sounds excessive but I promise that it’s not and that all of the elements work well together. Cream cheese instead of butter frosting, the high apple content and only the slightest hint of toffee  makes this cupcake a lot lighter than a more traditional cupcake too – you may even, if you try really, really hard, be able to convince yourself its healthy!

The recipe itself is probably one of the most easy and stress-free cupcake recipes I’ve ever used and I’ve used a lot, so that’s a bold statement. All three components; the cakes, the sauce and the frosting, are quick to whip up, I would even go as far as to say that the most time consuming and annoying bit is the chopping up of the apples and even a monkey could do that!

On the subject of the apples, I’m not one of those people who insist on using Bramley or cooking apples in my baking. My general rule would be to think about what you’re making and to make a choice between sweet or tart. I’m not an apple connoisseur (can you tell?) but those are essentially your options and I would suggest sweeter apples for cakes and more tart apples for pies and tarts. For this particular recipe I used Braeburns but like I said, think about it and go with your gut.

So Fi, here is your recipe! I hope you like it!

Some final tips before you get started:

• By the time you add all four eggs to the creamed butter and sugar, it will look all curdled and mildly disgusting BUT it will be fine once the flour is added.
• When making the frosting, make sure the butter is very soft so it all blends together properly.
• Again for the frosting, making sure you’re cream cheese is kept cool in the fridge until the moment you need it will ensure a workable frosting. If your cream cheese is at room temperature it’ll be too runny.
• While the lure of a lovely toffee sauce might cause you to get carried away, each cake really only needs a teaspoon (max!!). It’s enough to add great flavour without creating a messy, sticky cake.

Toffee Apple Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting (Makes 12)

Ingredients

For the Cakes:

200g Unsalted Butter (softened)

200g Golden Caster Sugar

4 Eggs

200g Self-Raising Flour

1tsp. Ground Cinnamon

2 Eating Apples (Peeled, cored and diced into ½cm cubes)

For the Toffee Sauce:

50g Soft Toffees

2tbsp. Double Cream

For the Frosting:

50g Butter (softened)

100g Full Fat Cream Cheese

300g Icing Sugar

1tsp. Ground Cinnamon

Ground Cinnamon to Decorate

1)      Preheat the oven to 180◦C and line a 12-hole muffin tin with muffin cases. For the cakes, cream together the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually add the eggs and mix in a little at a time.

2)      Into this mixture, sieve the self-raising flour and ground cinnamon and gently fold into the wet ingredients. Finally, add the cubed apples and stir until well distributed throughout the mixture.

3)      Divide the mixture between the 12 muffin cases and bake in a preheated oven for 25 minutes or until golden brown. Leave to cool completely.

4)      For the toffee sauce, place the soft toffees and cream into a saucepan and warm over a low heat until the toffees have melted and combined with the cream to make a sauce. With a knife, cut a small round out of the top of each cooled cupcake, fill with a teaspoon of toffee sauce and replace the cake that was removed to make the hole.

5)      For the frosting, cream together the butter and cream cheese using an electric whisk or mixer. Whisk in the icing sugar and cinnamon and stir until a smooth yet firm frosting has formed. Don’t mix for too long or the frosting may go runny. Pipe or spread the frosting to cover each cupcake before finally dusting with a small amount of ground cinnamon to decorate. 

Chocolate Orange Syrup Cakes

This week I’ve taken an idea and run with it, regardless of whether it makes sense or sounds nice or in fact even works when put into practice. I’m talking about Chocolate Orange Syrup Cakes. Not the snappiest title, I know and it is somewhat confusing but let me attempt to explain the (albeit questionable) logic behind it.

Basically this has all stemmed from me being bought new bakeware. To be more specific, a silicone heart shaped muffin pan. I wanted to use it but was getting bored of making muffins and cupcakes so started to search for an alternative. A couple of weeks ago I posted a recipe for lemon drizzle cake, a cake which had always been a favourite in my house, and it got me thinking as to how I could develop this recipe further. Now I have always been a huge fan of oranges – in fact I’m potentially the number one fan in the world. I have at least one a day and genuinely feel weird if I don’t have one, making it a borderline problem but we’ll ignore that for now! I also of course, love chocolate and therefore the combination of chocolate orange just makes perfect sense to me and so this is how the idea developed. It was like a big food word-association; lemons, oranges, chocolate orange – winning idea for a recipe!!

I could have made one large chocolate orange syrup cake but having done the lemon drizzle cake recipe so recently, I decided that something slightly different was in order...and I wanted to make heart shaped cakes.

So yes, these are what I’ll be scoffing this Treat Friday and having made myself get up and go to the gym at 7.30am, that’s completely fine. If only I could stop eating cake, I could save on the cost of a gym membership...and have a lie in. 

Some Final Tips Before You Get Started:

• As I’ve not used any sort of cake case in this recipe, make sure all of your muffin pans are really well greased. I melted butter and painted it onto the pans using a pastry brush and therefore avoided having to serve my cakes in the muffin tin with each person digging cake out of the hole with a spoon. That’d be so uncivilized.
• When making the syrup, it only needs heating very gently to help the sugar dissolve into the orange juice faster. If you’re dealing with a burnt pan situation then you’ve gotten carried away.
• It’s an obvious one but just make sure that all of the dry ingredients are sieved into the mixture. No-one wants to bite into a lump of baking powder or cocoa powder.

Chocolate Orange Syrup Cakes

Ingredients (Makes 16)

200g Unsalted Butter (softened)

200g Caster Sugar

200g Self-Raising Flour

1tsp. Baking Powder

3 Large Eggs

3tbsp. Cocoa Powder

8tbsp. Warm Tap Water

30g Flaked Almonds

Zest of 2 Oranges and Juice of 1 Orange.

100g Orange Flavoured Chocolate (roughly chopped)

For the Syrup:

150g Icing Sugar

75ml Orange Juice (freshly squeezed)

25ml Lemon Juice

2x 12-Hole Muffin Tins

1)      Preheat the oven to 180◦C. In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Into this mixture, sift the self-raising flour and baking powder and gradually add the eggs. Stir until well combined.

2)      In a separate bowl, mix together the cocoa powder and warm water to create a smooth paste. Gently fold this paste into the other ingredients before adding the flaked almonds, chocolate, orange juice and zest and mixing well.

3)      Divide the mixture into the muffin tins and bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cakes comes out clean.

4)      In the final minutes of baking, combined the ingredients for the syrup in a saucepan and gently heat until all the sugar has dissolved and a thin syrup has been made.

5)      Once the cakes have been removed from the oven, while still warm skewer each cake multiple times before pouring over a tablespoon of syrup onto each cake. Leave in the muffin tins until completely cooled.

Soft Pretzels

This week we’re talking soft pretzels. I thought it would be nice to have a change from the usual cakes and biscuits, so as a result, have decided to venture into the world of savoury baked goods...for this week at least.

I personally was first introduced to the soft pretzel many years ago on my family’s first visit to the USA. We went to Disney World, Florida and it seemed as though it was compulsory for there to be a pretzel stand at least every 100 yards. We’ve visited more than a few times and we seem to enjoy a giant soft pretzel at least once every visit. Family pretzel time!

Saying all this though, I have since seen them in pretty much all of the major shopping centres at home too!

Saying all this though, I have since seen them in pretty much all of the major shopping centres at home too!

Crispy, soft, buttery and salty, these pretzels are sure to be a favourite with any carbohydrate lover (aka any normal human being). Traditionally eaten dipped in mustard, I’ve also included a sweet option for those who really have to have a sweet on their Treat Friday! 

Now there are quite a few different steps to this recipe but don’t let that put you off! I haven’t made them in a while and when I dug up the recipe for this week, even I had a moment of ‘well, I’m not sure if I can be bothered will all of that!’ BUT it is so worth and not that difficult when it comes down to it. Probably the most irritating and by far the most fiddly part of the recipe is the shaping of the pretzels themselves. Also, with having to wait for the dough to rise for at least an hour, they’re not going to be made in a hurry. If you follow the steps below however, they’ll be great in the end!

Some final tips before you get started:

• If you have a freestanding mixer with a dough hook, your life is going to be so much easier with this recipe! It’s pretty much a case of putting it all in the bowl and just timing how long it needs to knead for. It can of course be done by hand, it just requires a little bit of effort!
• Kneading your dough for at least 10 minutes is KEY. I speak from experience having tried to make this recipe at 9pm last night after just getting in from work and the gym. I was very lazy and couldn’t really be bothered to knead for that long....I ended up with a lump of dough that wouldn’t rise. It went in the bin and I had to get up at 6am this morning to have another go. You have been warned.
• Traditionally, plain pretzels are left just salted. Lovely. As I said though, they’re great sweet with a cinnamon sugar covering. I’ve used that left over from the Jam Doughnut Muffins we made several weeks ago. You can find the recipe for the sugar here. Just brush melted butter over the baked pretzels and cover with sugar. 

Soft Pretzels (From Rachel Allen’s Bake)

Ingredients

600g Plain Flour

1 tsp. Fast-Acting Yeast

2 tbsp. Soft Light Brown Sugar

1 tsp. Salt

1 tbsp. Vegetable Oil

375ml Warm Tap Water

75g Bicarbonate of Soda

1 Litre Water

1 Egg Mixed with 1 tbsp. Water

1)      Mix the flour, yeast, light brown sugar and salt together in a large bowl or in a freestanding mixer fitted with a dough hook.

2)      In a measuring jug, mix together the warm tap water and vegetable oil. If using a freestanding mixer, slowly add to the dry ingredients running the mixer at a low speed. If mixing by hand, make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients, pour in the water and oil, slowly bring together until combined.

3)      Knead the dough for at least 10 minutes until you have a smooth, firm dough that springs back when pressed. Place the kneaded dough in a lightly oiled bowl and turn until the dough is coated in oil. Cover the bowl with cling film and leave in a warm place for 1-3 hours until it has doubled in size.

4)      Preheat the oven to 230◦C and line several baking trays with greaseproof paper.

5)      Place the dough on a lightly floured surface, punch out the excess air and divide into 10-14 equal pieces.  Roll each one into a thin rope and shape into a pretzel (see pictures above). Place on the baking sheets, cover and allow to rise for another 10-20 minutes.

6)      In a large, shallow saucepan bring 1 litre of water to a boil and dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in it. Place each pretzel in the boiling water and poach for 30 seconds on each side (don’t poach more than 3 at a time, use a slotted spoon to turn). Drain and return to the baking trays. Brush each pretzel with the egg wash and sprinkle the savoury pretzels with sea salt crystals.

7)      Bake for 8 minutes, turning halfway so both sides are crisp, until golden brown. For the sweet pretzels, while still warm, brush with warm golden syrup or honey and sprinkle this with cinnamon sugar.

Lemon Drizzle Loaf Cake

This week we’re talking about lemons and how they seem to be one of the best ingredients available when it comes to baking. Several weeks ago we made lemon Viennese whirls which were lovely but also gave me a craving for something that I haven’t made in a long while – lemon drizzle cake. Now we all know that I love to include fruit in my baking wherever possible, with the combination of sweet and tart flavours being my favourite and let’s be honest, nobody does this better than the lemon.

Lemon drizzle cake however, does not just have excellent flavour. It also has the most amazing texture with the lemon syrup making it incredibly moist, sticky and just generally amazing. I’m really hyping this up today, aren’t I?

Anyway, lemon drizzle cake is generally a huge favourite in my house and has been requested several times over the past few weeks. So here it is! I did consider writing some recipes for edible gifts considering its Valentine’s Day but thought that 1) this will automatically just annoy some people and 2) that my boyfriend would then know what I’m making for part of his gift. So yes, I’ve avoided that but if you do plan on making something there are plenty of great gift recipes available online at the typical addresses; BBC Good Food, Delicious Magazine, Food Network etc. Yes, it’s a lot easier to go out and buy for example, a box of chocolates but making them yourself just adds that personal touch.

Back to the lemon drizzle cake however, I make mine in a loaf tin because the shape and size of it really allows the syrup to distribute evenly throughout the cake. I’ve made it as a sheet cake before and it was basically just a bit too soggy once the syrup was added. This recipe obviously has the temperature and cooking time appropriate to a loaf tin so I suggest you use the same!

Some final tips before you get started:

• When it comes to zesting any kind of fruit, the only thing you need is a flat, mini-grater, such as that in the picture above. I’ve used all kinds of kitchen gadgets for this purpose before and this really is the most effective. So if you haven’t got one, invest! It’s worth it.
• When it comes to lining a loaf tin, don’t bother messing around with trying to get the baking or greaseproof paper to fit all sides of the tin exactly. I just cut out one long strip that just covers the base of the tin and the two short sides. Make sure there is an overhang of paper at each end so that once your cake has cooked and cooled, you can just run a knife along the long edges and use the flaps of paper at the end to lift out your cake. Simple.
• I use a BBQ skewer to puncture the holes in my cake to let the syrup do its drizzly thing but anything sharp and pointy will do. Just try not to get carried away and tear the thing to shreds.

Lemon Drizzle Loaf Cake

Ingredients

225g Unsalted Butter, softened

225g Golden Caster Sugar

4 Eggs

Zest of 2 Lemons

175g Self-Raising Flour

50g Ground Almonds

For the Syrup:

Juice of 2 Lemons

85g Icing Sugar

24cm loaf tin, greased and lined

1)      Preheat the oven to 180◦C. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually add the eggs and mix until combined.

2)      Sieve the flour into the butter, sugar and egg mixture, add the ground almonds and lemon zest. Stir to combine.

3)      Spoon the batter into the tin and level the top with a spoon. Bake for 45-50 minutes until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

4)      Immediately mix together the lemon juice and icing sugar in a saucepan and warm over a low heat until the sugar dissolves. Insert a skewer into the warm cake to create multiple holes before pouring the lemon syrup over the top of the cake. Leave in the tin to cool completely.

Oat and Raisin Cookies

This week you’ll notice that it’s biscuits again. I know we’ve been a little biscuit-heavy recently but these were specifically requested and I always aim to please. You’ll probably also notice that this week, it actually is a Treat Friday, rather than last week’s Treat Saturday. Well done me!

So on to the biscuits themselves – they have to be one of my all time favourites. While I’m a big biscuit fan in general, these are just the ones for me. If it came to a competition between oat and raisin cookies and chocolate chip cookies, I’d say “get those chocolate chips out of my face” every time. So I like them. Got that?

When it comes to the practicalities of making and baking them, they’re pretty much straight forward! No piping techniques or fillings required. You could get picky and try to make them all exactly the same size and shape but let’s be honest, no sane person ever said no to a cookie because it was the wrong shape! I’ve used raisins in my recipe but if you’re not a huge fan then you can definitely substitute for the dried fruit of your choice; cranberries would be good, as would dried apple. My point is that again, it’s one of those recipes you can adapt to your taste as long as you stick to the measurements provided. The only thing that I would say on the topic really is that I’d probably avoid substituting for chocolate. Once again, I know I have very little (no) control over what you do but a sweet, chocolate cookie is just not what we’re trying to do here.

Right, I’m off to pack for a weekend in the North...while eating the majority of these cookies. I’m technically supposed to be taking them up with me but when it comes to these, I have no self control. Oh well!

Some Final Tips Before You Get Started:

• The end mixture is fairly dry so don’t panic if you think it’s gone wrong. I just smoosh it together a bit when I’m making the mounds for the cookie sheet. If the mixture was any wetter, the biscuits probably wouldn’t hold together as well, seeing as they’re fairly gooey once cooked anyway.
• I’ve given a suggested cooking time of 12-15 minutes. As you would guess, cooking for 12 minutes gives you slightly gooey-er cookies whereas 15 minutes make them crunchy. Again, it’s all about your preference.

Oat and Raisin Cookies

Makes 20

Ingredients

175g Unsalted Butter (Softened)

160g Light Brown Sugar

130g Caster Sugar

1 Large Egg

1 tsp. Vanilla Extract

1 tbsp. Golden Syrup

170g Rolled Oats

160g Plain Flour

¾ tsp. Baking Powder

¾ tsp. Bicarbonate of Soda

¼ tsp. Salt

½ tsp. Ground Cinnamon

170g Raisins

1)      Preheat the oven to 190◦C, line two baking sheets with greaseproof paper. Cream together the butter, light brown sugar and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the egg, vanilla extract and golden syrup until well combined.

2)      In a separate bowl, combine the oats, flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.

3)      Stir the dry ingredients into the creamed mixture and stir until just combined. Add and stir in the raisins until evenly distributed throughout the mixture.

4)      Drop evenly sized mounds of the mixture onto the prepared baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between mounds. Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.

Treat Saturday? Lemon Viennese Whirls

I know, I know. I’m late. This week we’re obviously having a Treat Saturday rather than a Treat Friday and just this once, I think that’s ok. It is, I promise.

I’ve basically been feeling really ill all week with a sore throat and ear ache and was in so much pain! Finally booked a doctor’s appointment for Friday and then of course woke up and felt completely fine. So annoying. It did mean however, that I could finally motivate myself to get off the sofa and bake something!

This week then it’s Lemon Viennese Whirls and they are, if I do say so myself, delicious. My mother even said they’re one of the best things I’ve made for Treat Friday, which is a bold statement indeed! I have to admit, when I made them and took the photographs for this blog, I made a few mistakes and just didn’t have time to remake the recipe to rectify them. More than anything, I made my biscuits far too big! The original recipe from which I adapted these states that it will make 32 separate biscuits – 16 completed Viennese Whirls. Well, because I made my biscuits so big I only managed to make 12 separate biscuits – 6 completed Viennese Whirls. To be honest, they’re delicious but so huge they can be classified as monsters. So just try to control yourselves a little more than I did with the piping bag, don’t get carried away!

Some Final Tips Before You Get Started:

• Your mixture needs to be fairly loose and wet, if it’s too stiff it’ll be really difficult to pipe (I speak from experience). Make sure your butter is really, really soft and that the batter is really well mixed.
• Line your baking sheets with greaseproof paper and find some sort of circular stencil i.e. a glass or biscuit cutter that has around a 5cm diameter. Using this, draw circles on your greaseproof paper to give yourself guidelines for when you’re piping out your biscuits. This not only makes it easier but also means that your biscuits will be a uniform size(ish) for when you sandwich them together
• Speaking from experience again, handle your cooked biscuits very gently. They crack and break very easily!
• I’m not going to specify how many biscuits this recipe makes as obviously it depends on the size of your biscuits. Just try to make an even number for sandwiching!
• This is a great recipe in that once finished, they look really fancy but in fact, are incredibly easy to make so don’t be put off by their appearance! 

Lemon Viennese Whirls

(Adapted from The Hairy Bikers Best of British)

Ingredients

For the Biscuits:

250g Unsalted Butter, softened

50g Icing Sugar

250g Plain Flour

50g Cornflour

½ tsp. Vanilla Extract

1 tbsp. Grated Lemon Zest

1 tsp. Fresh Lemon Juice

For the Filling:

100g Unsalted Butter, softened

200g Icing Sugar

1 tbsp. Whole Milk

Drop of Vanilla Extract

75g Lemon Curd

2 Baking Sheets

Piping Bag with Star-Shaped Nozzle

1)      Preheat the oven to 190◦C. For the biscuits, in a blender mix together the unsalted butter, icing sugar, plain flour, cornflour, vanilla extract, grated lemon zest and lemon juice. Blend until well combined and soft.

2)      Line your baking sheets with greaseproof paper and stencil on your circle guidelines. Place the biscuit mixture into the piping bag with a star-shape nozzle and pipe in rounds onto the baking sheet. Bake for 13-15 minutes until slightly golden brown. Once baked, leave to cool on the baking sheets.

3)      While the biscuits are cooling, whisk together the butter and icing sugar for the butter cream. When just combined, whisk in the whole milk and vanilla extract until smooth and fluffy.

4)      Once the biscuits have cooled, cover the flat bases of half the biscuits generously with butter cream. Spread the flat bases of the remaining biscuits with around a teaspoon of lemon curd before sandwiching together with the butter-creamed biscuits. Enjoy, they’re delicious!