Melt in your mouth butter cookies made with custard powder (really) and icing sugar
Ideally I wanted to use my mum’s recipe for these because the results are always terrific. But she was on holiday, so I had to rely on my old friend, the internet. I got the recipe from Now Add Sugar, where you can also find helpful “cup” quantities for the ingredients rather than grams and ounces.
Ingredients (makes approx. 50 biscuits)
- 300 g / 10.5 oz butter
- 120 g / 4 oz icing sugar
- 150 g / 5 oz custard powder
- 280 g / 10 oz plain flour
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C (or 160 if you have a fan oven)/ Gas Mark 4 / 350 degrees F. Grease and line two baking sheets with greaseproof paper. I had to reuse each of my sheets twice, baking the custard powder biscuits in two batches.
Sift the icing sugar, flour and custard powder together. Mix.
Add the butter and vanilla essence and mix. You can do this by hand, rubbing the dry ingredients into the butter, or you can use a mixer until you have a smooth dough. If you feel your dough is too dry to be able to work with, add a little milk to the custard cookies mixture.
Shape the dough into small balls. If you want to get your custard powder biscuits roughly the same size, you can weigh the dough you use in each ball. I tried to use approx. 20 g of dough in each. Put the balls on a baking sheet, leave at least an inch between them.
Use a fork to press down the top of each of the dough balls.
Now bake for about 10 minutes. Keep an eye on them. Depending on your oven, they may need a few more minutes. They can start to burn quite quickly. You want to get them out when they are lightly brown. A few of mine were a bit too dark (they still taste good though!).
Put the cooked custard powder biscuits onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Store your finished melting moments in an airtight container. These custard powder cookies are a buttery treat which, after an initially satisfying crunch, melt away in your mouth.
A plea from this baker/writer
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Art and Soul 
Oh no… you did it again, I think I’m going to get fat! Lol
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Sorry! These are ridiculously easy to make too.
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Oh no! How awful! Lol
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You’re killing me with all your beautiful baked goods! I want to eat them so bad. Sadly, I gave up sugar almost 3 weeks ago. 😦
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Wow! Giving up sugar is amazing 🙂 I don’t think I could do it.
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The first 3 days was hard, but now I don’t crave it. Thanks!
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Oh I love these…I love the very short list of ingredients and they sound yummy. Maybe one to try doing with my son, we’re becoming quite the baking team! X
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The only thing I didn’t already have in the cupboard was the custard powder 🙂 And they’re quite easy to make with a small person because it’s just rolling small dough balls then squashing them! x
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Nom. Nom. 🍓
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They disappeared rather quickly! 🙂
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Can you make more? lol 🍓
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I’m trying not to! 🙂
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Your cookies seems delicious, I really want to make them. Oh btw can I replace icing sugar with castor sugar instead?
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Thank you, they’re very tasty!
I think you could swap the sugars but the final texture of the biscuit would be different: more crumbly than melting. I’m sure they’d still taste great though 🙂
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I made these last week. Best custard biscuit recipe ive tried. Family loved them, and I was asked to make them again this week 😂😂😂. I absolutely loved them.
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That is wonderful! I’m so glad they were popular 🙂 They’re still a firm favourite of mine too! Thank you for telling me – it’s made my day 🙂
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I made these for the first time today & I have to say, the smell coming from my oven was absolutely delicious & the taste of them…. wow! Best homemade biscuits I’ve ever tried. The smell reminded me of being back in the malls in orlando from all the delicious bakeries out there. Awesome 👌
I also love making your old school recipe sponge it goes down a treat in my family & doesn’t last long 😃
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I’m so pleased! 🙂
I have a lemon cookie recipe coming up in a couple of weeks which is quite similar. Delicious and they melt in your mouth!
I’m really glad the sponge cake turns out well for you. It’s a firm favourite in our house and a tray doesn’t usually last more than a couple of days 😂
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Oh, yum! These sound so good!!
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They are very nice, light biscuits. Too easy to eat the whole lot though!
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These biscuits have to be the easiest to make and the smell when baking is yum,i roll into sausage shape cut could not be easier 👏👏
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So glad they turned out well for you! The smell is lovely 😊
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Thank you so much for writing out this recipe. I had the Now Add Sugar version saved but after not making these in a long time I went to look up the recipe today and the site is gone! I knew icing sugar was involved so a quick Google led me to you. Yay!
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Some recipes call for cornstarch. What is the difference in taste and texture between cornstarch and custard powder?
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Cornstarch won’t add anything in terms of flavour. For these cooies to turn out ok, you have to use custard powder which will add the sweet vanilla flavour they need 🙂
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I like to make ahead. Checking in about people’s or Claire’s experience….
How many days can the dough sit in the fridge?
Anyone freezing the cookie dough balls?
How about freezing the fully baked cookies?
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Hello!
I would say you’d be safe making the cookie dough and, as long as you wrap it up well, it’ll sit well in the fridge for 3 – 5 days before you bake it.
Cookie dough is usually ok frozen for about 3 months, again as long as you wrap it up well so it doesn’t get covered in ice. Same goes for freezing the baked cookies – 3 months you should be ok 🙂
I hope that helps!
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