Thursday 8 March 2007

Vanilla Melting Moments



From Rachel’s Favourite Food at Home, by Rachel Allen.

These are such crumbly, sweet, comforting, cute, and of course vanilla and melting biscuits. I used to like them when I was little, either as a single biscuit with pink or blue icing on top or sandwiched as here with a butter cream icing. I used to make them a lot when I was a teenager and then they must have fallen out of the cooking habit, replaced with the pursuit of caramel and chocolate. I have ordered them with coffee when out, but these are not a biscuit that fairs well in tea rooms or coffee shops, well not any I’ve found anyway!

Last year before Christmas I was watching Rachel Allen on her TV series of the same name and she made these. It was like a light bulb lighting up a food memory and I thought ‘I’ve got to make them NOW’. So I did and they disappeared so quickly I had to make more. So last night the urge came again, and here they are. I hope that my little girl will grow up with the same fond memories that I have of these delicious, often forgotten, gorgeous vanilla biscuits.

Vanilla Melting Moments

Biscuits:
175g self raising flour
125g cornflour
50g icing sugar
225g butter, cut into pieces
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Vanilla Butter Cream:
50g butter, softened
125g icing sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 160 C/ (325 F) Gas mark 3. Place the flour, cornflour and icing sugar in a food processor and whizz briefly to mix. Add the butter and vanilla and whizz until it comes together (a minute or two, I do it slowly). Roll into 40 small balls the size of a large marble. Place trays on (no need to grease or line) and flatten down a bit with a fork. Bake for 10-15 minutes until still very pale in colour but, slightly firm. Remove carefully and cool on a wire rack.

Keep the same bowl in the processor and whizz the ingredients for the butter cream until they come together. Sandwich the biscuits with the butter cream. Makes 20.

17 comments:

Mara said...

Wow, Kelly-Jane, you HAVE started on blogging like lightning :)
These biscuits do look like they melt just by looking at. The photo is fabulous as well, it is so inviting, you feel like reaching out and getting a biscuit for yourself - and the cake stand...

Kathryn said...

KJ, these look really cute. I agree with Mara - the cake stand looks really inviting with those gorgeous biscuits on it!

What else have you made from Rachel Allen's latest book? I bought it from the book people a few months ago and then bought her first two - I really like them.

Kathryn x

Anna's kitchen table said...

They look really beautiful KJ, on the cake stand, and so perfect!

xx

Kelly-Jane said...

Thanks Mara and Anna!

Kathryn

I’ve cooked about 20 plus recipes from Rachel’s At Home book, everything was good, but my favourites were broccoli soup with Parmesan toasts, Winter veg broth with haricot beans and chorizo, quesadillas, spicy salmon cakes, drop scones, chocolate, hazelnut & toffee tart, chunky med pasta soup, butternut chorizo and feta frittata and the melting moments.

KJxx

Paola Westbeek said...

OMG, KJ! They look too delicious for words! Not only that, but nothing better than foods that bring back memories. Thanks so much for the recipe. I will certainly try them out soon. BTW, love the stand!

paola

julie said...

Mmmhh they look delicious, like some upmarket custard creams out of a Victorian tea party:) I love the name too, so romantic...

Lady M said...

Wow, those are perfect little cookies. YUM! How did you find sandwiching them? I am so clumsy and heavy-handed whenever I try to sandwich cookies they end up breaking, LOL.

xoxo
Ilana

Pinkjil said...

I too suffer from chronic heavy handedness but find that, if I wait until the biscuits/buns and completely cold before I make the icing and spread the icing on as soon as it is made, that helps. When sandwiching, I put a blob in the middle of the biscuits then press them together to spread it to the edges rather than tryig to "spread" it with a knife.

It's not failsafe but I find it helps. Although the broken ones due to clumsiness always went first when I presented them before as "broken biscuits have no calories" according to my friends!

Anonymous said...

Hi there,
i just stumbled across your blog and i have to say those biscuits look great! just like in the pic(ive got the rachel allen book! lol)
i just recently made some myself, though i changed the recipe a bit to make the biscuits chocolate.

Div

Anonymous said...

hi div what didt you do to make them chocolate???

Anonymous said...

I looked all day today for something interesting and found your recipe. I made the melting moments without the vanilla, I rolled them using powdered sugar and cut them out in 1.5" circles. When finished I filled them with Nutella (sandwiched) and dusted with powdered sugar...WOW, they are really good. Thanks for the inspiration!

Debbie

Anonymous said...

These biscuits are so delicious!

Im making them for the second time today!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

LOVE THEM YUMMM

High Stakes Online Poker said...

I sympathise with you.

Sarah said...

i made these biscuits for my junior cert and they were a very popular favourite and the examiner came back for more!!

McCoolio said...

Baking them now with my BF. We found that the mixture was too powdery for it to stay together so we added milk. Did anyone else have this problem? We are going to top ours with chocolate

Anonymous said...

Hi! I love the recipe. Already made it twice. But do you know how long they would last out of fridege? Thank you for your answer :)