custard cream cupcakes

Another custard cream themed bake. Sorry, not sorry. Oreo and bourbon lovers will have to sit at the back of the room. It's all about custard creams here.

When I asked Mum what she'd like me to bake for Mother's Day this weekend she requested custard cream cupcakes. After searching my blog archives I discovered I haven't baked these since 2011! Quite surprising as I baked them a lot pre blog. Sometimes with blogging I think there can be an expectation to only post "new" things, whether it's food, clothing combinations, craft projects, purchases etc. I like revisiting old favourites though. If it works and you love it, who cares!

As I couldn't be bothered faffing about with a piping bag, I just spread the icing on with a palette knife. Ironically, this actually took far longer and some may argue that these look hideously lumpy and ugly, but I rather like the rustic, juvenile application. It has a homemade charm. Plus this form of icing lends itself very well to sprinkles. And everybody knows that sprinkles are the best.

These cupcakes are just as tasty as I remember. The cream in the batter definitely gives the cupcakes an extra indulgent kick and I love the sweetness of the custard cream chunks. I must have picked the cupcake containing the least biscuit chunks to photograph here (typical!) but you can see they're in there.

I'll try to return with a non custard cream related bake, but I can't promise you anything...

Did I mention that I really love custard creams? ;)

White chocolate and custard cream browned butter blondies

Well that's certainly a mouthful isn't it?

Last week I was thinking about how oreos are often incorporated into brownies which led me to ponder whether custard creams could be put into blondies. After a quick google image search I noticed nobody had done it. So I made it happen.

After remembering how tasty my last blondies were, I adapted the recipe to use custard creams instead of raspberries. As the recipe link no longer works (why would you remove such a great recipe bbc?) I'll type it up at the end of the post.

I really enjoyed the texture of these blondies. They have that essential crispy, cracked surface and fudgy/chewy texture inside you'd expect from a good blondie or brownie but also an added crunch from the custard cream biscuit chunks. Then there are the delicious, smooth chunks of white chocolate just to punch up the sweet-factor even further. Basically, if you love sweet, vanilla based bakes then you'll love these. They're a real treat.

I also don't think I can go back to making blondies without browning butter. It really does add something. Plus the sweet, biscuity smell of butter while it's browning is pretty addictive. Yay for butter!

White chocolate and custard cream browned butter blondies

Recipe originally from bbc good food's website

200g unsalted butter
150g white chocolate chopped into chunks (I used Lindt as it has a lovely vanilla flavour)
300g light muscovado sugar
3 large eggs (I used duck eggs)
200g plain flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp good quality vanilla extract
100-125g custard cream sandwich biscuits, broken into chunks

Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4 and line a 25 x 22cm tin. (I didn't have the correct sized tin so I used a smaller oblong one and a 7inch square sandwich tin.) Melt the butter in a saucepan and cook gently for about 5 minutes until the white solids turn golden and the butter starts to smell biscuity and sweet. Side aside to cool for 5 minutes. Add half of the white chocolate to the melted butter and set aside again for a few minutes, stirring until combined. Meanwhile, beat together the sugar and eggs for a couple of minutes until thick and pale. Add the flour, salt, vanilla extract and cooled butter mixture and mix together. 

Pour into the tin (or tins) then scatter custard creams and white chocolate chunks on top, pressing them in slightly. Bake for 40-45 minutes until it has a golden crust and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out relatively clean. (Since I used smaller tins my blondies cooked quicker, about 35-40 minutes.) Leave to cool in the tin. It's tempting to dive in straight away but they cut so much easier once cool.

custard cream cupcakes

I haven't baked these in ages! I made them a lot last year but since buying the Hummingbird Bakery book I had forgotten about them. It's the "cookies 'n' cream" recipe from Cupcakes Galore by Gail Wagman. I think it's made with Oreos in mind, but I much prefer custard creams as a sandwich biscuit. Since I'm feeling a bit more organised today (writing a post before midnight!) I'll include the recipe.

I also realised that my first cake stand has not appeared on the blog yet! It's Royal Winton Grimwades and one of my most prized possessions. Mum bought it for my 19th Birthday after we stalked various ebay sellings for months. Eventually we won! It's strange, at the time there were only ever around two, maybe three pages of three tier cake stands on ebay (most of which were wedding tiers) but now there's at least twenty pages!

Although my icing was a bit on the stiff side leaving a rough edge (or frilly if you want to make it sound pretty!) the cake was as tasty as I remembered. I forgot to take a photo to show the custard cream chunks inside the cake, so being the super nice blogger that I am, I took it upon myself to eat another one so I could snap that photo.

In other happy news, I found another teacup, saucer and sideplate today matching these ones so I now have four. The shop keeper gave me a little discount again because she remembers me!

Custard cream cupcakes

250g plain flour
2 tsp.baking powder
1 tsp. salt
125g unsalted butter, room temperature
200g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
180ml single cream
115g coarsely crushed custard creams

Preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Mix flour, baking powder and salt together and set aside. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition and add vanilla. Alternately add flour mixture and single cream and beat until batter is smooth. Fold in crushed biscuits and spoon batter into cupcake cases, filling cups about 2/3 full. I used fairly large cases and it made 18 cupcakes. Bake for 20-25 mins. 

The book gives a white chocolate cream cheese icing but for this cake I prefer a basic buttercream. I pretty much follow the Hummingbird Bakery icing: 250g icing sugar, 80g butter, 25ml milk (more usually!)