Curd Cakes & Pink Bunnies

I blogged some tima ago about gingernuts, a biscuit that quite a few of my heroes favor. Another sweet treat they enjoy is a curd cake — also known as a maid-of-honour, though I generally just say curd cake. A few readers have asked about these, so I thought I’d post a bit about them.

Curd cakes are made with soft cheese, which is a very variable term.  Some recipes say sieved cottage cheese, and some suggest something like Philadelphia cream cheese, maybe even the light version. My guess is, such an old recipe is probably very forgiving and flexible.

The recipe for the ones pictured is from this site, along with a little story about how they were named Maids of Honour by Henry VIII. But there are quite a few variations, so I suggest you browse a few recipes and pick one.
Here’s Delia Smith’s version. And this is Mary Berry’s. And there are plenty more – just scroll down.

 I haven’t tried any of them yet, but I plan to. I love to bake, but only ever do it when I know I have visitors coming, or am going somwhere and will bring something to share. Otherwise, if I just bake something for me, I will eat it all!

Yesterday a friend of mine was planning to drop in with two little girls and, since I wanted to use a couple of new biscuit cutters,  I decided to  make bunny-shaped and lamb shaped Easter biscuits with pale pink or white  royal icing. In the end I couldn’t get all the ingredients for royal icing (which dries glossy and hard) so I just used ordinary icing, with a tiny drop of red dye to make pink bunnies.

I’m no kind of decoration expert, so I just blobbed the icing on and smoothed it to the edges somewhat. I got better at it as I went along. The lambs were quite blobby with drips down the side.

I didn’t put any faces on, as I know when I was a kid I would never have eaten a bunny or a lamb with an actual  face! But a smooth pink, bunny shape, no worries. <g> And I did put tiny marshmallow tails on them.

Do you do any special baking at this time of year?