Snacks for housesitters

Since Lauren and Tom have very kindly agreed to come and look after my spoilt animal while I'm away, I figured the least I could do was to leave them a full biscuit tin. So I took half an hour out of my mad packing, cleaning and organising to make some yoyos (p43)

I chose yoyos because Lauren mentioned to me the other day that she tried the Edmonds yoyo recipe and found the mixture too crumbly to make decent biscuits. I was curious to see if I would have the same problem. It was probably not a good idea to try a reportedly dodgy recipe when I was so short on time, but I was reasonably confident of a good result.

Yoyos are similar to shortbread in that they have a lot of butter, and use icing sugar as opposed to plain sugar. So you begin by creaming together the butter and icing sugar, then add vanilla, and sift in flour and custard powder.

The mixture does seem quite crumbly at first, but I persevered with my mixing and got a fairly stiff dough by the end of it. It rolled into nice smooth little balls which I then squished with a fork before putting them in the oven.

Yoyos have to be sandwiched with butter filling, (to look like a yoyo) so I mixed that up while the biscuits were in the oven. Butter again, with more icing sugar and custard powder. Last time I made butter filling I used the recipe on p76 and had difficulty getting it to mix through. This time was quite easy - probably because the proportions in this version are different.

The yoyos came out looking nicely browned, in fact perhaps slightly overdone, after 15 minutes. The stated baking time was 15-20 minutes, but after 20 they would have been totally burnt. I guess it probably depends on your oven.

While my yoyos were cooling, Mum and Dad dropped by: I had to use one of my last ginger crunchies to persuade Dad not to steal any of my yoyos. By the time Mum and Dad left, my yoyos were cold enough to fill. There was plenty of filling for a mere 20 biscuits, so each of my yoyos had a good thick butter filling.

I had a single smaller biscuit left over - created from the last few crumbs of mixture in the bowl, specifically for use as a taste tester. I gave it a generous dollop of icing and tried it. It was quite nice, the biscuit quite dry and shortbready, and the filling very rich and buttery. I think one yoyo (which, of course, is two biscuits) would make a generous mouthful - you wouldn't want a second one. We'll just have to wait and see if Lauren and Tom like them!