Passionfruit cream biscuits.

Last week I found this pressed glass pedestal cake stand in the charity shop. With its fluted edge and yellow rose pattern, it was begging for a fresh, sunshine bake. As it is quite a small cake stand, I decided it had to be biscuits.

Some may be horrified that I've never worked with passionfruit before. I've had drinks and eaten cake containing passionfruit, but I've never physically handled one! Clearly I lead a sheltered existence.

I love how all the flavours come through in the biscuit: zingy lemon zest and passionfruit pulp, sweet golden syrup and rich butter. The passionfruit seeds add a bit of crunch too, which I always enjoy in a biscuit. Then there's the passionfruit buttercream which can only be described as sweet sunshine. I may have eaten four of these in one sitting....

Bake these zingy biscuits if you're feeling miserable or fed up with the cold winter weather. They will make you happy :)

Passionfruit cream biscuits

Recipe from Lakeland Cupcakes and Cookies

125g butter, softened

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon rind

75g caster sugar

2 tablespoons golden syrup

150g self-raising flour

100g plain flour

60ml passionfruit pulp

2 tablespoons passionfruit pulp

90g butter, softened

160g icing sugar

Beat the butter, lemon rind and sugar in a bowl with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add golden syrup and beat together. Stir in the flours and passionfruit pulp. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead until smooth. Cut dough in half; roll each portion between sheets of baking parchment to 5mm thickness. Refrigerate 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 160C/140C fan/Gas 3. Grease oven trays and line with baking parchment. Cut 25 4cm fluted rounds from each portion of dough and place about 2.5cm apart on trays. Bake for about 10 minutes in the oven until light golden (mine took about 15 minutes). Cool on the trays.

For the buttercream, strain the passionfruit pulp through a sieve into a small jug and discard the seeds. Beat the butter and sugar in a bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in the passionfruit juice. Spoon the buttercream into a piping bag fitted with 5mm fluted nozzle (I used a wilton 1M). Pipe the cream onto half the biscuits and then place the other biscuits on top.

Note: You will need about 6 passionfruits in total.

I think I made 30 in total as opposed to 25 which meant I didn't quite have enough icing so I made an extra quarter of the icing quantity.