Don’t you just love a jammy dodger? These ones are special: they are smiley jammy dodgers! I spotted the cutters for these biscuits in Lakeland a while back and just had to get them. They are brilliant! You get four shapes in the pack, with the front and back cutters for each one. I love their smiley faces so much 🙂 One of my friends said that these ones taste a bit like Viennese whirls, which is good as they are her favourite!

 

The recipe I used for these is the same one that I used for my Pac Man Biscuits, and I also made a batch of vanilla buttercream (the same one I used here). It makes about 24 biscuits (with both layers) and I only used half of the buttercream, so froze the rest.

 

Ingredients

 

For the biscuits

100g/3½oz unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
100g/3½oz caster sugar
1 free-range egg, lightly beaten
275g/10oz plain flour
1 tsp vanilla extract

 

For the filling

250g icing sugar, sifted (plus extra for dusting)

80g unsalted butter, at room temperature

25ml semi skimmed milk

A drop of good quality vanilla extract

Seedless raspberry jam

 

Method

 

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.

 

2. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until combined. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract, a little at a time, until well combined.

 

3. Stir in the flour until the mixture comes together as a dough. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured work surface to a thickness of 1cm/½in.

 

4.Using biscuit cutters, cut biscuits out of the dough and carefully place onto the baking tray. I found that the star shape was the most difficult to cut out (you may need a knife to help you get them out), but managed to cut the others just fine.

 

5. Bake the biscuits for 8-10 minutes, or until pale golden-brown. Keep an eye on them as they turn brown very quickly! Set aside to harden for 5 minutes, then cool on a wire rack.

 

6. To make the buttercream, cream together the butter and icing sugar. Add the milk and vanilla extract and beat until smooth – if you can do this bit in a mixer or with a handheld mixer, you’ll get it really smooth!

 

7. Take a cold biscuit base and spread a little buttercream over it. Repeat with the jam – place a little in a bowl and give it a good stir to loosen in first (you don’t need to heat it as you would with a cake). Don’t go mad with the spreading of the jam or it will just go everywhere when you put the top on, but make sure that there is enough jam where the face will be! Place the top in position, and repeat until all the biscuits are done.

 

 

I think it’s definitely time to enjoy at least one of these with a cuppa now! 🙂