Honey Cream Shortbread Recipe
English Butter Biscuits with Sweet Filling
This easy recipe for cookies will please all ages and will be appreciated when offered for morning or afternoon tea.
These sweet shortbread biscuits are perfect to serve with tea or coffee. There is nothing quite as nice as being served fresh homemade biscuits when visiting someone for morning or afternoon tea.
This cookie recipe is simple enough for children to help with, although it is probably best to avoid allowing younger children to spread the cream as the biscuits may crumble if handled too roughly. Young children will love pressing fork marks into the shortbread or simply pushing the ‘lid’ onto each pair of biscuits after the cream has been spread onto the base.
Shortbread Ingredients
- 125g unsalted butter (softened) or margarine
- 1 level tablespoon honey
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup self-raising flour
- ½ cup custard powder
(Note - If self-raising flour is not available, substitute 1 cup plain (all-purpose) flour and 1½ teaspoons baking powder)
Shortbread Method
- Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F)
- Place butter, honey, sugar and vanilla in a bowl and cream together with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
- Add self-raising flour and custard powder and mix with a wooden spoon until well combined.
- Place heaped teaspoonsful of mixture onto a lined biscuit tray, allowing room for the biscuits to spread as they cook. Lightly press down on the biscuits with a fork to mark the top. The fork is less likely to stick to the mixture if it has been dipped in flour.
- Bake for 10 – 12 minutes or until lightly golden.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool on biscuit trays for 5 minutes. Remove to a wire rack or cooling stand and allow to cool completely before icing.
Honey Cream Ingredients
- 2 level tablespoons unsalted butter (softened) or margarine
- 1 level tablespoon honey
- ½ cup icing (confectioner’s) sugar
Honey Cream Method
- Place butter and honey in a small bowl and cream together until light and fluffy.
- Add icing sugar and mix together until smooth.
- Join two shortbreads together by spreading icing onto the flat side of one and gently pressing together with a second biscuit.
These shortbreads are quite sweet. They can be served as individual shortbreads (without the cream centre) to reduce the sweetness factor. Single shortbreads can be simply decorated by lightly dusting with icing sugar. Alternately, for a child’s party or morning tea, the honey cream can be piped or spooned onto the top of the biscuits and decorated with sprinkles. In this instance it is a good idea to make the party cookies smaller (reducing the cooking time if necessary) so as to be more easily handled by little fingers and to prevent a sugar overload.
