Lemon curd biscuits recipe

These pretty little lemon curd biscuits look so impressive, but are actually super simple to bake! A sweet sugar cookie dough, sandwiched together with good-quality lemon curd and decorated with feathered icing, they're lovely enough to package as gifts, but still inexpensive enough to scoff by yourself with a cup of tea if you fancy.

Ingredients

For the biscuits:

• 200g plain flour
• 125g butter
• 75g caster sugar
• Finely zested rind of 1 lemon

For the decoration and filling:

• 350g royal icing sugar
• 4-5tbsp lemon juice
• Yellow food colouring
• 6-8tbsp lemon curd
• Icing sugar, for dusting

You will need:

• 7cm round cutter
• Baking sheets lined with baking parchment
• 2 disposable piping bags
• Cocktail stick

Method

1. Set the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4.
2. To make the biscuits, tip the ingredients into the bowl of a food processor and whizz until the mixture just starts to bind together. Knead dough lightly to form a ball. Roll it out on a surface, lightly dusted with flour, to about 3mm thick. Cut out circles, then cut away part of each circle to give exclipse shapes. Place shapes on lined baking sheets. Re-roll trimming until all dough is used.
3. Bake the biscuits for 12-15 mins, or until just starting to turn golden at the edges. Remove from the oven and slide the baking parchment with the biscuits on to a wire rack and leave to cool.
4. To make the icing, tip the icing sugar into a bowl and beat in 4tbsp lemon juice, for about 3-5 mins. The icing should give a smooth surface in the bowl when the bowl is tapped; if it doesn't adjust the consistency with a little more lemon juice if it's too stiff or more royal icing sugar if it's too soft. Colour the icing yellow and spoon most of it into a piping bag. Add more colouring to the remaining icing and put in another piping bag.
5. Decorate half the biscuits with icing and leave to dry. To decorate, cut off ends of the piping bags to give a small hole. Almost cover the top of one biscuit with the pale colour, and, working quickly, before the icing sets, pipe lines of the darker yellow over the top. Draw the tip of a cocktail stick through the icing, in each direction, to feather the icing. Tap biscuits gently to give a smooth surface. Sandwich the biscuits together with lemon curd, using a plain biscuit as the base and a decorated one on top.