Recipe: Lemon filled butter biscuits

I'm determined to join in with some of the blogging Bake Off challenges that have started now. I love baking but with only the two of us in the house it's not something that I do very often.

My grandmother was the complete opposite - almost every day there would be a pie, a cake or biscuits being baked. Her egg and bacon pie was ledgendary, as were her monster Cornish pasties. I thought it would be nice to try and tie in the weekly theme with either a memory or a recipe that reminds me of my Gran.

The theme on this week's Bake Off was biscuits (don't tell me what happened - a little recording mix up means I'll be watching this lunchtime on iplayer!). There's only one biscuit recipe that reminds me of my Gran - Mrs Brown's biscuits. Mrs Brown was a friend of my Gran. I don't know how they met each other, only that she used to live 2 doors down from my junior school. At least once a week we would go into Mrs Browns' and while they caught up over a pot of tea, I would get a glass of orange or lemon squash and a buttery, slightly chewy, coconut biscuit. They were amazing!

Mrs Brown moved into sheltered housing near our house and we continued to visit her. These biscuits would always be there, as a treat and as payment for running a little errand. A few years after that she moved to South Africa to be with her children, but before leaving she neatly and carefully wrote out the recipe for my Gran. As brilliant as my Gran was, her biscuits were never quite the same as Mrs Browns'. Even now over 25 years later I can still remember being sat in her house savouring this biscuit. Sadly I don't have this recipe with me, but in honour of Mrs Brown I've come up with a recipe that combines the taste of the buttery biscuit and the lemon squash.

Lemon Filled Butter Biscuits

275g plain flour
200g butter, cut into small cubes
100g icing sugar
pinch of salt
The zest of 1 lemon (or lime) and half the juice.
2 egg yolks
Lemon curd.

Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/Gas Mark 3

Place the flour, butter, icing sugar and salt into a bowl. Using your fingertips, rub the ingredients together until it resembles breadcrumbs.

Add the zest, juice and eggs, mix together to form a soft dough.

Working with a small amount at a time, turn out onto a floured surface and roll to a thickness of about 0.5cm. Cut out 15 biscuits using a 6cm cutter and place on a baking tray (while you are working with the dough keep the remainder in the fridge, this will make it easier to work with).

Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until light golden brown. Remove and transfer to a rack to cool.

While the first batch are cooking, cut out a further 15 biscuits. Make a hole in the middle of each, using a smaller cutter, then bake as above.

Once all the biscuits are cool use a teaspoon to place a small dollop of lemon curd onto the underside of the whole biscuits, spread the curd slightly. Place a biscuit with a hole onto the curd covered biscuit and dust with icing sugar.