Melting Moments

From a really young age I always loved being in the kitchen and this was where my lifelong love of food and cooking began - watching my mum cook and picking up basic skills that I built on as I got older. There were surprisingly few cooking disasters along the way (the notable exception being a misguided attempt to make honeycomb which resulted in the totally trashed, burnt saucepan being buried in our back yard in suburban Perth to hide the evidence. It's probably still there!)

Today's recipe goes way back to my childhood and early cooking days - and is one of the first things that I remember making all by myself. Andrew has been asking me to make biscuits for him to take to work this week, so I thought I would dig in to my childhood repertoire and make a batch of Melting Moments.

These biscuits are simple to make, but require a light touch. The mixture is super soft, but cooks to a gorgeous, melt in your mouth consistency once cooled. I played around a little with the the filling - normally I would just make a basic icing with lemon juice and icing sugar  - but I had some lemon curd in the pantry, which I added along with lemon rind and some fresh lemon juice. The result was a lovely tangy filling with a much richer depth of flavour than the standard one. Passionfruit is also great as a filling flavouring if you have any. My recipe makes 12 generous sized Melting Moments - but you could make little bite size versions if you wanted something a bit more dainty. Here is what mine looked like -

Melting Moments

With Lemon Curd Icing Filling

In other news, regular readers might have noticed my new blog header banner at the top of the page. I had been thinking about refreshing the design for a while, when out of the blue my gorgeous and highly talented artist and designer friend Blair Parkinson sent through a new design he had been working on to get my feedback. Well of course I absolutely loved it, and it now holds pride of place here at Gourmet Goddess. Blair specialises in Opera design, as well as having a considerable portfolio of evocative and beautiful original works, many based on ancient mythology. As if that wasn't enough, he also offers a design service. He really is a man of many talents. His work is available for sale and he also takes commissions, so check out his website for more - http://www.blairparkinson.com/

It's struck me that I've been posting a lot of sweet things in the past few months, so I'm hoping to balance things with some more savoury dishes very soon. We are nearing the end of Summer here in Australia, so we will be seeing a change in the produce available too - always great inspiration for new dishes. In the meantime, enjoy these delicious Melting Moments....

Melting Moments
You will need: 
For the biscuits: 250g butter, 1/2 cup sifted icing sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla. 2 cups plain flour, 1/3 cup cornflour.
For the filling: 3 Cups Icing Sugar, Rind of 1 lemon finely grated, 3 tablespoons lemon curd, Juice of 1 lemon.

Method: 
Preheat the oven to 160C. Line two baking trays with baking paper or silicone baking mats.

Beat together the softened butter, icing sugar and vanilla until light and pale. Fold in the plain flour and cornflour to make a super soft dough.

With floured hands, lightly roll the dough into balls and place on the baking trays, leaving at least a couple of finger widths of space between them. With a floured fork, gently press the balls down to form disc shapes.

Bake for 15 minutes. Allow to cool on the trays completely before filling them.

To make the filling, mix the icing sugar, lemon curd and rind well. A teaspoon full at a time, add the lemon juice until the mixture forms a firm icing (you may not use all of the lemon juice, that's ok)

Put a spoonful of the filling onto half of the biscuits and put the remaining biscuits on top. Cover and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes to set.

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