Anyone have a good Maids of Honour recipe?

[Shaun]

Watching The Great British Bake Off tonight with the family and the contestants are making Baklava; which started a discussion about how I came to first taste it (London CycleChat meet-up on Primrose Hill) which then moved on to the sorts of sweet pastry our mum's used to make when we were kids, which brought up memories of my mum making Maids of Honour.

They are small buns with pastry base, jam in the middle, and a fluffy coconut topping.

Does anyone else remember them (or even still make them) and have a good recipe we can try at home?

My mum's used to look like this:

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

I'll have a look through my Grannie's old recipes later on (possibly later today, maybe later this week). It is the sort of thing that would be in there!

 

[Morning Glory]

I used to visit the original cafe (Maids of Honour) from which the recipe is supposed to have originated. I lived just round the corner in Kew, at the time. That was in the days before I became downwardly mobile!
I use Clarissa Dickson Wright's recipe from Comfort food, slightly adapted (though I don't think I've made them for a long time). Perhaps I'll make them and use apricot jam (she uses quince jelly) - then they can be entered into the Recipe Challenge!

For the pastry:

• 225g plain flour
• 135g butter
• 2 tsps icing sugar
• 1 egg yolk, beaten with 1 tsp cold water

For the filling:

• 50g unsalted butter
• 75g caster sugar
• 1 heaped tsp selfraising flour
• 2 egg yolks (I use one whole egg and one egg yolk)
• 100g ground almonds
• Shredded rind of 1 lemon
• 1 tbsp thick cream (I leave this out)
• 6 tbsps quince jelly (or any jam)

Method:

1. Mix all the pastry ingredients together to form a soft dough. Set aside to rest for 30 minutes.
2. Preheat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF/Gas Mark 6. Roll out the pastry and use a pastry cutter to cut 12 rounds to fi t a 25cm tartlet tin.
3. To make the filling, cream the butter and sugar together thoroughly then stir in the flour. Beat in the egg yolks, followed by the almonds, lemon rind and then the cream.
4. Put a little quince jelly in each pie dish then spoon in the filling mixture. Bake the tarts in the preheated oven for 20 minutes, then leave to cool on a rack. Dust with icing sugar before serving.