Sophie's Lemon Limoncino Sandwich Biscuits
May 29, 2023
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Welcome to Katrina's Great British Baking Project, aka Bake Along with Bake Off! If you haven't checked out my post about the hows and whys of this project, please head over there and give it a quick peruse. (TL, DR: I am baking the recipes from Bake Off that sound the best to me for fun, deliciousness, and learning!)
Check out the other bakes from this episode:
The Challenge
This challenge comes to us from Collection 5, Episode 2: Biscuit Week. For those of us continental folks, in British English, a biscuit is a thin, crisp cookie. I love cookies, so I think this will be a fun episode! I am starting with The Signature, which in this episode is for "24 Identical Sandwich Biscuits".
The Rules
The Bake Off rules stipulate that the biscuits had to be: "Two separate biscuits neatly sandwiched together with a flavorsome filling of your choice that should complement your style of biscuit." The contestants had 2 hours and 15 minutes to complete their cakes.
Pitfalls To Beware Of
Paul and Prue mention that there are two main dangers of making a cake with fresh fruit.
- The biscuits have to be exactly identical. That is hard to do when making so many!
- If the biscuits are too hard, and the filling too soft, the filling with get pushed out when you bite the cookie. The textures must be perfect!
My Favorite Bakes
There wasn't a single bake that sounded bad, but I narrowed it down to three:
- Chris's Chocolate Chia Seed Biscuits with Whisky Caramel Filling
- Flo's Gin Jam Butties with gin jam and vanilla buttercream
- Sophie's Lemon Limoncino Sandwich Biscuits
The Lemon Biscuits are Chosen
I love lemon, so these just really spoke to me! I also have been meaning to add some limoncello* to my bar cart for a while, so this seemed like the perfect excuse! I also put out a call in my newsletter asking which flavor I should do and more than a few of you voted lemon!
*I couldn't find limoncino anywhere, but the internet said that limoncino and limoncello are pretty similar, so limoncello it is!
There are only two components for these biscuits. I needed to make:
- The lemon biscuit.
- The lemon curd filling.
I knew I wanted to use this recipe for Lemon Curd Sandwich Cookies from The Kitchn for the biscuit part, so that was easy. I looked at about 10 recipes for limoncello lemon curd and they were all so vastly different and I had no way of choosing which was best! Ultimately, I decided to just go with the curd recipe that came with the cookies and adjust slightly!
How I Did It
These lemon biscuits started with - lemons. Specifically, the zest. I knew I needed zest for the biscuits themselves and the curd filling, so I zested a few and set that aside.
The Biscuits
The dough was very simple - I got going mixing the wet ingredients, which were butter, cream cheese, and granulated sugar. I then added the rest, which was an egg yolk, vanilla, and about half of the lemon zest. After mixing that together, I added in flour and salt, and mixed gently until the dough looked like this.
After getting it out of the bowl, I weighed it so I could separate the dough into two equal portions, and rolled it out thin between two sheets of parchment. I tried to use chopsticks on the sides to maintain an even thinness like Sophie did in the show, but it was really annoying and didn’t seem like it was working with my tapered rolling pin, so I ditched the sticks and just went by feel. The dough needed to chill, so I popped it in the fridge for an hour.
The Curd
While the dough chilled, I made the curd. Here were some things I knew, from some quick Googling:
- Limoncello is stronger in lemon flavor than lemon juice.
- The curd recipe called for 1 cup of lemon juice that is boiled and reduced until it is 3/4 cup.
So I thought I could do mostly limoncello and then it would be strong like the reduced lemon juice, just without the boiling. So that is what I did - 1/2 cup limoncello and 1/4 cup lemon juice.
I whisked together two yolks, one whole egg, and some sugar, before slowly whisking in the lemon juice mixture. I placed the bowl of lemon and egg and sugar over a pot that had a little bit of simmering water in it. This allows the curd to cook more gently instead of being directly in the pot and therefore right over the flame, which reduces the risk of scrambling the eggs and making a lumpy, runny curd.
I still stirred the whole time, switching from the whisk to a spatula once it got a bit thicker so that I could scrape any curd collected on the sides of the bowl. Once it reached 180º Fahrenheit, I strained it into a clean bowl to remove any lumps and all of the lemon zest, and the curd was done.
I obviously had to give it a taste and it was VERY GOOD! I couldn't taste the limoncello, but it was still delicious!
Baking the Biscuits
I used a little jar to cut out rounds of dough, and while the first few came off the parchment easily, the ones closer to the center were really stuck. I tried to use a spatula which just ended up smushing the rounds, so I decided to re-chill that first sheet.
For the second sheet, I made sure to peel both parchments off before cutting out the rounds. This worked much better, so I got the first tray into the oven.
This moment was mildly stressful because I had dough all over my kitchen in various stages - the first tray of biscuits were almost done baking, and another tray had just gone in. There was frozen dough and warm dough and also dough in the fridge. It was only a tiny moment of chaos though, because eventually, the first tray of cookies was turning golden and therefore done.
With the cookies cooling and the curd in the fridge, everything was basically ready to go! By this point, I was feeling cool, calm, and collected. ;)
Putting It All Together
Assembly was very simple. A teaspoon of curd did the trick, and then I laid down a silicone mat so I could dust powdered sugar just on one half of the cookie.
I was pleased to find out that I could dust all of them at the same time! How efficient. And there they are! I think they turned out pretty nice if I do say so myself!
The Official Rating
Paul’s handshakes are only bestowed upon the bakers when they have baked something really exceptional.
My rating for how likely I am to bake this recipe again is: 9.75/10 handshakes (rounded up to 10/10!)
🤝🏼🤝🏼🤝🏼🤝🏼🤝🏼🤝🏼🤝🏼🤝🏼🤝🏼🤝🏼
Lemon curd is incredibly low effort to high reward and it paired beautifully with the tender cream cheese cookies. The only thing I would do differently is leave out the limoncello and save it for sipping instead!
My rating for my execution of this bake is: 9/10 handshakes
🤝🏼🤝🏼🤝🏼🤝🏼🤝🏼🤝🏼🤝🏼🤝🏼🤝🏼
The biggest mistake I think I made was rolling out the dough too thinly. I really should have measured and made sure that the dough was nice and even. It ended up being okay, but it wasn't picture-perfect! I also think the curd was too thin because the top cookie was sliding off the bottom ones. I think that might be fixed with an extra egg yolk in the curd, but I would have to do some experiments to be sure!
To Sum Up
These cookies are delicious; perfectly lemony and perfectly sweet. I am glad I chose to make these!
Stay tuned for the rest of the bakes from Collection 5, Episode 2 - Biscuit Week!
Here are the other two bakes from Collection 5, Episode 2 - Biscuit Week!
Head to the links below for the previous bakes from Episode 1 - Cake Week!
I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day and thank you so much for being here!
💖, Katrina
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