Home Cooking
Now that MasterChef is over, I hardly ever have MasterChef-induced cravings that force me to make certain food items. This is probably the closest occurrence since then...
I listen to the radio every morning on the way to clinic and B105 are doing this 'Senior Masterchef' competition where listeners are encouraged to nominate their friends/family-members who are mature-aged and know how to cook. One lady was short-listed and she brought in a plate of melting moments. Obviously, because it was on radio I didn't get to see/smell the products but the way the morning crew were describing them made them sound like heaven on earth.
That was a few days ago and I had a craving for melting moments ever since.
Though I have probably got the worst social memory out of everyone I know (i.e. I can remember out of necessity e.g. for study but can barely remember my classmates from earlier this year), I vaguely recall melting moments being one of my earliest cooking attempts. I have no idea how they turned out... and bare in mind that this might not have happened at all.
Melting moments are named as such because when you pop them in your mouth, they're supposed to dissolve away. In a less poetic sense, they're like very short shortbread cookies: extremely buttery and rich. They're often sold/served sandwiched with an icing of some sort. On this occasion, I favored lemon icing.
The recipe I used is from Exclusively Food which is one of my most reliable recipe sources. I didn't stray much from the original recipe but I did halve the quantities by 2. Below are the quantities that I used.
Melting Moments
Makes ~ 10
Ingredients:
- 95g butter, softened
- 30g icing sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 20g cornstarch
- 100g plain flour
- 75g icing sugar, sifted
- 20g butter
- 1 and 1/2 tsp lemon juice
1. Preheat your oven to 150 degrees Celsius. Using an electric mixer, mix together the icing sugar, butter and vanilla until soft and fluffy.
2. Add the cornstarch and continue mixing to combine.3. Turn down the speed and add the flour. Mix until fully incorporated.
4. Using your fingers and a teaspoon, roll small balls (about 2cm diameter) of dough out onto a tray lined with baking paper. Repeat with all the dough, leaving about 3cm space between each ball.5. Using a fork, press gently down on each ball to flatten to around 3cm diameter and 1cm height.
6. Bake in the middle of the oven for around 20min or until the base is just golden and the cookies are just firm (in my oven it took around 15min).7. Meanwhile, make the icing. Beat together the butter, icing sugar and lemon juice. Add more butter/icing sugar as required until you get a spreadable consistency.
8. When the cookies are ready, cool them completely on a rack. At this stage I paired them up according to size so that it was easier for me to sandwich them (it was a bit like match-making the cookies hehe).
9. Once cookies are cool, you may sandwich them with the icing. Serve!
I have a word of advice here... the cooling stage is important. I am extremely impatient so I started sandwiching with icing while the cookies were still slightly warm. That was OK initially... but then I decided I had too much icing so I started putting more icing between each of the 2 cookies. Large amounts of icing + warm cookies + warm day = icing oozing out the sides = mess.
To get my photos I had to quickly refrigerate the cookies to prevent further oozing and then use a paper towel to clean the sides. As you can see from my photos, there are icing smears all around the sides!!
So let that be a lesson for all...
Bite shot
Anyway all that didn't affect the taste. The cookies were VERY melty. Definitely deserving of their title. The cookies themselves weren't very sweet so I find the icing rather necessary here. It was one of those situations were I finally got what I'd been craving, ate 3 times the amount I should have, and now don't want to touch them for a few months. At least. :)
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