There’s two treats that I remember my own Granny baking. The first one is of course her infamous Coconut Ice. And the second is Custard Creams. Even Granny raves about this recipe as being the best custard creams recipe she’s ever used. High praise indeed!
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It has been long regarded as the favourite biscuit of us Brits but nothing really beats one fresh from the oven and sandwiched with homemade buttercream. In our house it’s a definite family favourite, with a batch lasting little less than a few hours because you can’t just have one!
There’s not much more that can be said about these classic little biscuits because they really do speak for themselves. So what are you waiting for? Whip up a batch of the best ever Custard Creams you’ll ever taste! You can thank me later.
Custard Creams
Ingredients
For the Biscuits
- 170 g Butter at room temperature
- 55 g Icing Sugar
- 170 g Self-raising Flour
- 55 g Custard Powder
For the Filling
- 50 g Butter at room temperature
- 100 g Icing Sugar
Instructions
- Pre-heat your oven to 180°c (160°c for fan assisted ovens or Gas Mark 4) and grease a couple of baking trays with a little butter.
- In a large bowl cream the butter & icing sugar until light and fluffy.
- Gradually add the flour & custard powder a little at a time until the mixture forms a paste.
- Divide into small balls (about a teaspoon-tablespoon per biscuit) and place onto your pre-greased baking tray with a bit of space between. Flatten eat ball lightly with a fork.
- Bake for 12-15 minutes until the appear dry on top.
- Allow to cool on a wire rack. Mix the butter & icing sugar to form the butter cream and once the biscuits are completely cool, pipe or spread a little butter cream onto half the biscuits and sandwich together with the other halves.

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Lovely biscuits. Will make mine a bit smaller next time as only had 10 biscuits – or maybe I will just make double quantity!
Fantastic recipe. I have now made these a couple of times for family and they love them!
Cooked these in the work bake off and everyone was asking me for the recepie. So nice :)
My granddaughter is dairy intolerant so wasn’t sure if the recipe would work with dairy free butter. It most certainly does and she absolutely loved them as did the rest of us! Will definitely be making these again for her
Is “dairy free butter” the same as lactose free butter?
No. Lactose free and dairy free are different. Lactose free still contains milk proteins, lactose is the sugar in milk. For my dairy free daughter I use Flora to make these. Hope this helps x
What might ‘custard powder’ be here in the states please?
You can buy it on Amazon or in one of those British product stores
I cooked these for 12 minutes. Perfect but very delicate this they broke, how can i make them structurally more sturdy.
Hi.leave them to cool slightly before transfering them from backing tray to rack
You can make these into peppermint custard creams by using half bournville cocoa powder with the custard powder and peppermint flavouring. Then flavour buttercream with peppermint and green colouring.
I made these last week when I saw your recipe just delicious, could you add vanilla th the filling for a different taste
Can I substitute self raising gluten free flour for regular flour? Would I need to adjust recipe quantities?
Yes, I made these with gluten free flour and they worked fine, just a little more crumbly, I followed the same quantities as with regular flour.
Amazing recipe! First attempt at custard creams and it went brilliant.
More generally, it’s wonderful not having to wade through dozens of paragraphs of a life story every time I want a good recipe – your little openers are perfect!
Very good recipe. Delicious. Thank you.
This is a smashing recipe. The biscuits go down great every time. Well done Amy and thanks for sharing in such an easy to follow way. I wish my nana had made these.
Be mindful that they start to singe really quickly so don’t take your eye off them. 170 degrees and bang on 12 minutes in our fan oven. Definitely leave them twenty minutes or so before transferring to the rack because they crumble otherwise.
I know others have said that the buttercream makes plenty so it must just be us who make double the amount….
Finally, we like to add a good blob of quality strawberry jam to the middle of ours. It goes lovely with the filling and gives us a sort of Viennese Whirl.
Fabulous.
.