Vanilla melting moments

Last night I was feeling a little bit grumpy, so decided to make some yummy, fattening, sugary things to cheer myself up. I wanted something that would give me a sugar hit with one mouthful, and something that would be super quick and easy to make. Enter, Vanilla Melting Moments. I saw the recipe for these on a Rachel Allen cooking programme yonks ago, and are reserved for occasions like this. They're soft, crumbly, sweet biscuits that literally melt in your mouth. I will warn you, they're quite sickly after one or two (especally if you 'sample' the buttercream as you make it, like me...)

The recipe below makes about 20 melting moments, so be sure to share!

Biscuits

175g self raising flour

125g cornflour

50g icing sugar

225g butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Buttercream

50g butter

125g icing sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160C.

2. Put the butter and vanilla into a bowl and cream together until the mixture is quite pale.

3. Once softened, sift in the flour, cornflour and icing sugar, and mix thoroughly. You can use an electric whisk to make it easier, but definitely stir the dry ingredients through before you whisk or you'll end up with a big ol' mess! You want to mix until you have a soft dough.

4. Make 40 small balls the size of a large marble and place onto baking trays. There's no need to grease or line the trays. If you can't get 40 out of your mixture, make sure you a least have an even number of balls. Flatten down each ball with a fork - only a little bit though, you don't want flat pancakes!

5. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes until still very pale in colour but slightly firm. Mine take about 9-10 minutes, so don't be tempted to sit down with a magazine and a cuppa whilst you wait :)

6. Remove the biscuits from the tray carefully because they're really fragile, and cool on a wire rack.

7. To make the buttercream, soften the butter and vanilla in a bowl, then mix in the icing sugar. Again, you can use an electric whisk, but I found it therapeutic to mix it myself. It helped vent my frustrations if nothing else!

8. Once the biscuits are cool, sandwich two together using the buttercream. See, that's why you needed an even number!

9. Now you can sit down with your magazine, a nice cuppa and a couple of Vanilla Melting Moments - enjoy! :)

You can sandwich them together with a chocolate spread like Nutella for something a little different, or you can make Chocolate Melting Moments by adding some cocoa powder to both the biscuit mixture and the buttercream mixture. You could even keep them as singles if you wanted to, and top them with melted chocolate... Yum!

xoxo