To begin, preheat the oven to 160°C/320°F.
Line two oven trays with parchment paper and set aside.
In a large bowl, add the flour, margarine, caster sugar, custard powder, egg yolk replacer, and vanilla extract.
Then, using clean hands or a spatula, combine the mixture into a dough.
Once a dough has formed, roll the dough into a ball, and place it in the centre of a large sheet of parchment paper. Lay a second sheet of parchment paper on top of the dough and then flatten the dough out slightly with your hands.
Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough to about 0.5mm thickness.
Peel off the top layer of parchment paper. Lightly dust the cookie dough with some flour to prevent the dough from sticking.
Then, using a circular cookie cutter (with a flowery edge forthe full Jammy Dodger experience), cut out as many shapes from the dough aspossible. Press down firmly to ensure the cookie cutter reaches all the waythrough the dough.
Carefully transfer the biscuits onto the prepared oven trays. As the dough is quite soft, it’s best to limit how much you handle the dough. To remove the biscuits from the parchment paper to the oven tray, simply tip the parchment paper slightly and the dough should gently fall into your other hand. Remove any excess dough around the biscuit shape and set aside.
Re-roll the spare dough and repeat the process of cutting out biscuit dough shapes until all the dough has gone!
To achieve the hole in the centre of the biscuit, I use the tip of a circular piping nozzle to press into the middle of half the biscuits (remember, this is a sandwich biscuit so half will be the top and the other half will be the base). Remove the little circles (or hearts, if you have the right sized cookie cutter) from the centre of the biscuit dough and either cookie as their own mini biscuit or re-roll to create more Jammie Dodgers.
Place the biscuits in the oven for 10-12 minutes, or until they are lightly golden brown (I prefer to put the ‘top biscuits’ with the hole on the bottom shelf of the oven and the ‘base’ biscuits without a hole on the higher shelf).
Once cooked, remove from the oven, and allow the biscuits cool completely.
Vigorously stir the jam filling of your choice so that it is completely smooth.
Top Tip: To pour the smooth jam into a piping bag: - Fold back the sides of the piping bag over your hand as you hold it. - Twist the piping bag just above the nozzle – this prevents the jam from pouring out the nozzle while you fill the piping bag. - Pour the jam into the piping bag. - Roll the sides back up on the piping bag. - Twist the top of the bag so the jam doesn’t spill out of the top either! - When you’re ready to pipe, untwist the piping bag above the nozzle and hold the base of the nozzle to guide the filling as you pipe the jam onto the base biscuits. Now go ahead and pipe a small circle of jam (about the size of a £1 coin) into the centre of our ‘base’ biscuits.
Carefully press the biscuit tops directly over the centre of the jam so that the jam slightly pushes through the hole in the centre but doesn’t spill out.
To serve, dust your Jammy Dodgers liberally with icing sugar and enjoy!