Gluten-Free Custard Creams and Honeybuns

Custard creams are a British classic. Indeed, they’re the nation’s favourite biscuit, but it can be hard to get gluten-free ones. Cue the Honeybuns gluten-free baking cookbook. It has a recipe for crunchy, sweet and buttery gluten-free custard creams filled with vanilla custard buttercream. Read on to find out more about this fabulous book and for the recipe.

Honeybuns

For those not in the know, Honeybuns is a gluten free bakery selling all types of cakes and biscuits throughout the UK. Established by the appropriately named Emma Goss-Custard in Oxford in 1998, Honeybuns has moved from a lone bicycle delivering homemade cakes, to a company employing twenty five people.

It’s now located at Naish Farm in Dorset, where a nature reserve has taken the place of conventional agricultural activities and the farm buildings have been converted into a bakery. An old chicken shed now houses the Bee Shack cafe, which claims to serve the best gluten free cream tea in Dorset. Canny punters head there to get their fix. For those keen to try this exclusive experience, make sure you turn up on the first Saturday of every month. That’s the only day it’s open.

The Honeybuns website is quirky and fun and features a blog, a web cam of Joaney the donkey as well as the promotion of Bee Green and local produce. It also has an online shop available if you are unable to source their products locally.

Honeybuns Gluten-Free Baking

The Honeybuns gluten-free baking cookbook is equally quirky and reflects Emma’s ethos of caring about good quality food, the environment and the local community. The first thing I noticed when I opened the book, was a little box accompanying each recipe stating what you can compost. You can, for example throw eggshells, tea bags and orange from the delightfully named Bumble Barrow fruit cake, into your compost bin.

I have to say I fell in love with this book the moment I saw it. Written by Emma, it has its own style. It’s homely and based on real life experience but with a modern twist. I liked the look and feel of the book with its robust hardback cover featuring not only a scrumptious looking cake, but also a Cornishware jug.

The pages are well laid out with clearly written instructions. Tips and alternative ways of doing things are scattered throughout. The accompanying photographs made me want to set to immediately with my trusty bowl and wooden spoon or better still grab a fork and get stuck in.

In keeping with the rest of the homely nature of the book, the pictures are not highly styled and have a mat finish which appeals to me. Some of the pictures featured a number of vintage tea plates, which I’m now coveting.

Although there are plenty of pictures, not all of the recipes have one, a common but disappointing feature of many cookery books these days. Pages are, however, enlivened with little sketches, such as cups, teapots, jugs and bees. 

Gluten-Free Recipes

The book starts with the Honeybuns story and goes on to describe gluten free baking and what different ingredients and techniques are needed. It’s then divided into seven specific chapters relating to a different type of bake. These are: cakes, muffins, traybakes, brownies & other chocolatey things, flapjacks, cookies & biscuits and puddings. It finishes with a list of gluten free storcupboard ingredients and where you might be able to buy them.

Unsurprisingly, the chapter on brownies and other chocolatey things drew me in rather quickly. I might even have, err, jumped directly to it. And no regrets, there was plenty there to keep me interested, including two types of brownies, some chocolate and prune cakes topped by chocolate dipped prunes, a chilli chocolate cake and double chocolate and raspberry tartlets.

Each recipe features an introduction, which gives a bit of background to the recipe and mentions any specific health benefits the featured ingredients might have. We’re told, for example, that the toffee-topped almond and rhubarb cake contains vitamins A and C from the rhubarb. Many of the recipes are also dairy free.

The ingredients used are not just a mere substitution of gluten free flour for wheat flour, the recipes are interesting, appealing and worthy in their own right. Ground almonds, ground hazelnuts, polenta and gluten free oats are the main ingredients used, although you can find linseed, sorghum, tapioca and rice flours in some recipes.

Any pre-conceived ideas of what gluten free cooking is like should be abandoned. Because there’s no hardship or deprivation to be found here.

How To Make Gluten-Free Custard Creams

So, out came my trusty bowl and spoon and into it went the ingredients for custard cream biscuits. What have custard creams got to do with chocolate you might ask? Well the chocolate recipe I really wanted to make needed some custard creams (without the cream) as a base. What’s a poor girl to do?

I make most of my bakes the old fashioned way and these biscuits are no exception. That is, I cream butter and sugar together by hand. I then beat in eggs and stir in any remaining ingredients. But you can place everything into a food mixer in one go and let that do the work for you instead. Just make sure your butter is sufficiently soft.

The dough is quite soft and sticky, so you may need to cover it in a wrap and place in the refrigerator for half an hour to firm up. When it’s time to roll out the dough, dust your work surface liberally with gluten-free flour as the dough is likely to still be a bit sticky.

Roll out to about a quarter of a centimetre in thickness, then stamp out three times five centimetre rectangles. As you can see from the photos I went with a four times five centimetre heart-shaped cutter instead.

The biscuits take about ten minutes to cook. Whilst you don’t want to over-bake, it’s important to make sure they’re done or they won’t be crunchy. They should be light golden brown. As you can see from the photo above, some of mine were slightly browner than I’d intended. My excuse is that I have a temperamental oven and it’s hard to get an even bake.

Gluten-Free Custard Creams: Post Baking

Nevertheless less, they turned into a great crunchy biscuit with a pronounced granular texture from the polenta. They tasted sweet and buttery with a good dose of vanilla. The butteryness reminded CT of Bonne Maman Galettes. I had no luck whatsoever in restraining him. Although the texture was very different, I thought the custard creams tasted quite similar to the shop bought variety I remember – only better.

No custard cream is complete without a vanillary custard filling. The buttercream is really easy to make, as long as your butter is nice and soft. Just place all of the ingredients into a bowl and give them a good beating.

With the amount in the recipe below, I managed to get sixty two biscuits. I made only half the amount of the actual gluten-free custard creams as I wanted the remaining plain biscuits for another recipe. The plain biscuits are perfect for making a gluten-free cheesecake base or as in my case, lemon sherbet tiffin.

Once filled, the biscuits will keep in a sealed container in a cool place for three days, but they may go slightly soft. If you’re not going to eat them straight away, it’s probably best to keep them unfilled until you need them. The plain biscuits will keep for several days.

Other Gluten-Free Recipes for Cookies and Biscuits you Might Like

• Chocolate macaroons
• Chocolate pistachio biscotti
• Jammy flapjacks
• Marzipan macaroons
• Tiger nut chocolate chip cookies (vegan)

Keep in Touch

If you’d like more gluten-free recipes, follow the link and you’ll find I have quite a lot of them. All delicious, of course.

Choclette x

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Gluten-Free Custard Creams – The Recipe

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Gluten-Free Custard Creams

Custard creams are a British classic. Indeed, they're the nation's favourite biscuit, but it can be hard to get gluten-free ones. This recipe is for crunchy, sweet and buttery gluten-free custard creams filled with vanilla custard buttercream.

Prep Time30 mins

Cook Time10 mins

Total Time40 mins

Course: Afternoon Tea, Snack

Cuisine: British

Keyword: biscuits, buttercream, cookies, gluten-free, traditional

Servings: 25 biscuits

Calories: 176kcal

Author: Choclette @ Tin and Thyme

Ingredients

Biscuits

• 150 g unsalted butter – softened
• 150 g golden caster sugar
• 1 large egg (I used a duck egg)
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 150 g fine polenta
• 150 g ground almonds
• 100 g custard powder

Cream

• 100 unsalted butter
• 25 g icing sugar
• 2 tsp custard powder
• ¼ tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

Biscuits

• Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
• Beat in the egg and vanilla extract.
• Stir in the polenta, ground almonds and custard powder.
• Bring it together with your hands to form a ball of dough.
• Alternatively, place all ingredients into an electric mixer and let that do the work for you.
• Cover the dough and place in the refrigerator for at least half an hour to firm up as it’s quite soft and sticky.
• When you’re about ready to start rolling the dough, set the oven to 180℃ (160℃ fan, 350℉, Gas 4).
• Dust work top very liberally with gluten free flour as the dough is likely to still be a bit sticky.
• Roll out to about ¼ cm thick and cut into heart shapes with a 3 x 5 cm cutter.
• Gather all the bits into another ball and repeat the rolling and cutting process.
• Place them slightly apart on lined baking trays as they may spread.
• Bake as near to the centre of the oven as you can get for 10 minutes until slightly browned. Well a few were more than slightly browned, but it’s hard to get an even bake in my oven.

Cream

• Cream the butter and icing sugar together along with the custard powder.
• Add the vanilla extract and cream some more until it’s super light and fluffy.
• Spread this over 25 of the biscuits and cover with a further 25 biscuits.
• Dust with icing sugar.
• Put aside any biscuits that are left to be used for another recipe or just eaten plain.

Notes

I made 62 individual biscuits in total.

Please note: calories and other nutritional information are per serving. They’re approximate and will depend on exact ingredients used.

Nutrition

Calories: 176kcal | Carbohydrates: 17g | Protein: 2g | Fat: 12g | Saturated Fat: 6g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 39mg | Sodium: 16mg | Potassium: 37mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 7g | Vitamin A: 282IU | Vitamin C: 1mg | Calcium: 26mg | Iron: 1mg

Tried this recipe?Please take a photo and mention @choclette8 or tag #tinandthyme on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.

Disclaimer: the publishers, Anova Books, sent me the book for review purposes. As always, all opinions are my own. Thank you for your support of the brands and organisations that help to keep Tin and Thyme blithe and blogging.