Each butterfly is hand decorated.
Lavender Bakery had to make an awful lot of butterfly biscuits for The Natural History museum
Food colourings and Lescure butter
The ‘guides’ either side (those long white sticks)
Intricate piping decoration
Sweet Biscuit Recipe courtesy of Lavender Bakery
200g soft butter
200g caster sugar
1 egg
400g sifted plain flour
1 tsp vanilla extract (or zest of a lemon)
Cream butter and sugar – but not too much, add egg, add flour – refrigerate until firm but not hard.
Roll out, cut shapes
Refrigerate again on trays
Bake at 180C until golden brown.
The best pate sucrée recipe (Leiths):
170g plain flour
a pinch of salt
85g unsalted butter (the best quality you can afford)
3 egg yolks
85g caster sugar
2 drops vanilla essence
Sift the flour with the salt on to a work surface. Place butter in the centre of a well in the flour, then place yolks on top of the butter, the sugar and vanilla on top of the eggs.
Using a pecking motion with the fingertips of one hand, combine the centre mixture until smooth.
Using a palette knife if you have one, scoop the flour on to the butter mixture.
Chop the flour into the butter until the mixture sticks together.
Gather pastry into a long narrow rectangle. Then smear together ‘fraiser’ the pastry.
Michelle taught me when you roll it out:
- that you only flour underneath
- you can use ‘guides’ to maintain a similar thickness of rolling
- you roll from the middle away from you
- you turn the pastry in quarter turns
Don’t forget The Underground Tea this Sunday at 4pm…
Oh, the afternoon tea menu looks wonderful! I’m getting greener and greener – and not just because I’m still fighting this darn virus! One day soon, ML, I WILL attend the UR! Meanwhile, may Sunday be as sweet as the butterflies look…
M x