New Neighbour

We have a new neighbour and she very kindly invited us for drinks the other day, so that we could get to know each other.

I thought that this would be a good opportunity to bake something - Lundulph and I are still munching through the various Christmas treats and I've not been able to bake for a couple of weeks, so this was a great opportunity.

Going through my recipe collection, I decided to try out two more of the Danish Bake-Off goodies from 2012. Now both below recipes can be done on a single day, but since I'm rather busy during the days at the moment, I made the doughs on the night before.

Lemon sandwich biscuits
makes about 45

Dough
250 g plain flour
200 g soft unsalted butter
0.5 tsp salt of hartshorn (ammonium bicarbonate)
120 g caster sugar
half an egg, lightly whisked

Lemon buttercream
50 g soft unsalted butter
3 - 3.5 dl icing sugar
3 tbsp lemon juice
zest of one lemon, finely grated

Method

1. Using one hand, carefully pinch together flour, butter and salt of hartshorn to fine crumbs - it'll look like wet sawdust.
2. Mix in the sugar, then finally add the egg and bring together to a soft dough.
3. Divide in two and place each piece between two sheets of clingfilm, then shape into discs.
4. Place the discs in the fridge and chill for at least 30 minutes
5. Pre-heat the oven to 200 °C (180 °C if fan assisted oven) and line trays with baking paper.
6. Dust your work surface generously with flour, then take one disc out from the fridge and roll out to about 3 mm thickness, making sure the dough doesn't stick.
7. Cut out cookies, I made round ones with the 48 mm diameter cookie cutter.
8. Bake for 5 - 8 minutes, then let cool down on a wire rack. You might want to bake just a few on the first tray to see if the temperature needs adjustment, the biscuits should't spread too much.
   
9. While the biscuits are cooling, make the buttercream. Start by stirring through the butter so that it goes really soft and creamy.
10. Carefully add the icing sugar and incorporate into the butter until 3 dl have been incorporated.
11. Now add the lemon juice and zest and stir in. If the buttercream feels too runny, add some more icing sugar until it reaches a piping consistency.
12. Transfer to a piping bag with a star nozzle. Pipe a circle on half of the biscuits and press on the remaining ones to form round sandwiches.

By the way, I only made half the amount of dough into cookies, the second dough disc is frozen, I just didn't have the energy.

On the whole, these were very nice, even if the oven was pre-heated to 190 °C, a bit hot for the first tray, and they browned too much and also spread way too much. I turned it down for the second and third trays. This made the sandwiches look a bit funny, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with how they tasted which was really nice. But they are fairly large and one is quite enough, I think.