Jammy dodgers and custard creams

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I was trying to decide what delicious treat to bake for my lovely children to take to school in their packed lunches last week and was flicking through Tana Ramsay's ' 'Family Kitchen'. "Mmmmm" thought I, "Jammy Dodgers"...

The recipe is really easy although the dough needs to rest (according to Tana) for 5 hours in the fridge so when I embarked on it at 4.30 in the afternoon I realised I was going to be baking at 10 p.m. However, undeterred, I carried on. The kids 'helped' and we had the dough in the fridge in no time. The dough was pretty easy to roll out once it had been in the fridge and cut into the number of biscuits she indicated which was good. I was a bit disappointed that the jamming didn't happen till after the biscuits are baked - I'd imagined that you somehow sandwiched the unbaked biscuits together and then baked - along the lines of jam tarts. I might try it sometime and see what happens.

But back to the recipe. The other downside is that the ground almonds in the recipe meant the kids couldn't actually take them to school (but I didn't take long to convince myself to carry on anyway), and as they weren't to be consumed all at once (honest) I decided to sandwich at point of consumption rather than doing them all at once, putting them in a tin and watching them go soggy. We didn't have raspberry jam as specified in the recipe, but homemade strawberry jam was delicious, as was shop bought apricot. The biscuits sandwiched together pretty easily, although the top biscuit (the one with the hole cut out) was prone to cracking, but I think that might have been my cack-handed sandwiching more than anything.

Anyway, I had an attack of nostalgia and spurred on by the success of these, and also Hugh F-W's digestives from River Cottage Everyday which I made a few months ago and about which I am sure to blog more, I remembered a Nigella recipe for Custard Creams that I'd seen somewhere. Turns out the recipe is in Feast - Custard Cream hearts as part of a Valentines day feast - and not Domestic Goddess, but of these 3 biscuits, they are definitely the ones that taste most like  what you're expecting, but without the additives etc (well, apart from the rubbish that's in the custard powder, but let's not worry about that). The biscuits are easy to make and the cream is delicious - a kind of custard buttercream. I didn't have heart cutters so I just used round ones and my daughter helped with the decoration so while I was trying to emulate the Great One with her neat edging of dots, she did a more 'eclectic' design. They all taste the same though, and the good news is that as they are nut free, the kids can take them to school.

Shame we ate them all in about 2 days flat. Better do some more baking...