Homemade French Petit Beurre biscuits with strawberry buttercream filling
Made with fresh strawberries - best cookie for when strawberries are in season! 🍓
Published originally on my blog on 19 June 2015
I’ve been on a pastry and cake baking bender these past few weeks and this blog has, unintentionally, turned a bit into a pastry blog. Now that summer fruits are making their appearance at the market one after the other, I can’t say I’ll be able to stop making sweet things. Let me assure you, though, savory dishes are still my number one love, but as I’ve said so many times in the past, good things need to be shared, therefore I couldn’t not share these strawberry filled petits beurres.
Petits beurres are butter biscuits originating from France. They are famous around the world and in Greece we not only dunk them in our morning or afternoon coffee but we also use them in all sorts of desserts. They are not too sweet, they are very crispy, a hard type of biscuit really, and that is why they are perfect for dipping.
Their signature rectangular shape with the scalloped edges, the small holes on the top and slightly burned corners is difficult to recreate if you don’t have a specific cookie cutter and, luckily, a few months ago, I had bought one in the hope that one day I would make these cookies myself. I finally did.
I remember when I was little, I loved petits beurres so much that I used to take the whole packet to myself. I’d start eating one after the other, always starting from the little scalloped edges all around the cookie and then, reluctantly, eating the center. I never would have thought then that I would make them myself one day.
They are so easy to make that I thought I’d fill them up with something scrumptious to make it more of a challenge so I chose to make a strawberry buttercream because strawberries are everywhere at the moment. The buttercream is not too sweet, due to the pleasant acidity of the strawberries, it’s smooth, fluffy and gets firm in the fridge, and, of course, incredibly tasty because, c’mon, strawberries!
I love filled biscuits in general and these really make my heart sing. The thing, however, in this case, is that given that petits beurres are hard biscuits, it’s a bit difficult to eat them without the filling squirting out from the sides. But you can do what I have always done with filled biscuits. Perhaps an unorthodox way of eating them but a successful one is to split the cookie and eat each filling-covered half on its own.
Of course you could make just the biscuits and eat them any way you like. Oh and the buttercream, you can use it to frost cakes and cupcakes. It’s up to you. Just make sure to have fun when you make them.
Homemade Petits Beurres with strawberry buttercream filling
If you are wondering if it’s worth making these since you can buy them everywhere, let me tell you, they are so easy and quick to make and they’re so delicious, you’ll forget the store-bought ones even exist. Or maybe it’s just me. Because, you know I’m a sucker for making anything from scratch.
You can use other fruits instead of strawberry in the buttercream. Cherries, raspberries and blackberries work great as well as blueberries, but make sure you sieve the fruit purée in order to get rid of seeds and/or skins.
The recipe yields a little more buttercream than needed to fill the biscuits, but you can keep the rest in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks to use in any sort of cake or cupcake.
If you don’t have a petit beurre cookie cutter, cut the dough in small rectangular shapes and make small holes on top with a toothpick, or cut the dough in whatever shape you like.
