Melting Moments

When I set up shop at the markets again this year, I decided a couple of different things on the table would help pique the interest of the Double Bay shoppers. I added gingerbread men for the kids and decided Melting Moments were a great option for mums to have with their coffee.

I had tried out the recipe a few weeks before and my husband and I found them irrestible. The fat buttery biscuits with a gorgeous dob of lemony frosting in the middle. And they didn't take that long to make either, which as I found, was extremely important on production day.

These biscuits are a classic in Australia. And I had customers who live in the USA saying they couldn't get them there. Well now you can just make your own.

Ingredients
250g salt reduced butter
1.5 cups plain flour
1/2 cup pure icing sugar (powdered sugar)
2/3 cup corn flour
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees celcius. Line a large baking tray with bakiing paper and set aside.
2. Combine the butter, icing sugar, flour, corn flour and lemon zest in the bowl of your Kitchenaid. The butter must be at room temperature for this to work. Using the paddle beater mix on first gear until the mixture forms a dough. There will be a point where you think it's not going to work and you need to add liquid of some kind. Do not be tempted! Just let it mix and it will come together.
3. Form teaspoonfuls of the mixture into small balls and place evenly across the baking sheet. Try to get 20 balls onto the sheet - you should still have half the mixture left. I use my small icecream scoop to make these balls. It means every biscuit is almost exactly the same size.
4. Use a fork to press each ball down into a disc. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes or until the bottoms are very light golden brown. Do not over cook! These biscuits are meant to be blonde.
5. Repeat with the remaining mixture. You want to have 40 pieces in total.
6. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

Frosting
90g salt reduced butter
1.5 cups icing sugar
3 tsp lemon juice

1. Place all the ingredients in the bowl of your Kitchenaid and mix on sixth gear until thoroughly combined. Continue beating for one minute so that the frosting is nicely whipped.

Assembly
1. Fit a plastic piping bage with a 1cm star piping tube. Don't even try to use the old fabric piping bags. The water from the butter will squeeze right through and leave your hands feeling horrible.
2. Squeeze a small amout of frosting onto 20 of the biscuits the sandwich a second biscuit on top of each one. Try to match shapes and sizes (even though you've made them all perfectly identical.
3. Allow to set for 30 minutes, then scoff!

Makes 20 biscuits which keep for a week in an airtight container.

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