Melting Moments

These are light, crumby, buttery, sweet biscuits (cookies) that I’ve been baking for years. The plain version is the original but I’ve developed my own chocolate version, which is also included here.

Ingredients:

120g / 4oz butter or margarine (recipe says butter but I’ve always used marg) OR
140g / 5oz butter or margarine if you’re making the choc version
60g / 2oz icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar)
30g / 1oz cornflour (cornstarch)
1 cup Self Raising flour
2 tablespoons cocoa for the chocolate version
About 2 tablespoons white sugar for choc version

Method:

Preheat oven to 150 C / 300 F

1. Melt butter/margarine and sieve (sift) in icing sugar. Mix well.

2. Add sieved (sifted) flour and cornflour to butter mixture (and cocoa for choc version). Mix thoroughly until it forms a dough.

3. Roll into balls – this quantity should make 20 balls. Place the balls on a greased / oiled baking tray (cookie sheet) and squash down with a fork. I generally push the fork down twice, the second time at right angles to the first time, to form a cross-hatch on top.

 

4. Choc version only: using a sieve, sprinkle white sugar over the biscuits.

5. Bake at 150 C / 300 F for 15 minutes.

6. Allow to cool on the tray. Once cooled they can be kept in a sealed container or on a cling-wrapped plate in the fridge.



Icing (Frosting)

There are a variety of ways to ice (frost) these. Traditionally they’re sandwiched together with vanilla icing, but there’s many variations and you can simply pipe squiggles of icing on top of the biscuit if you don’t want to make sandwiches.

Ingredients:

4 metric (20mL) tablespoons icing (confectioners’) sugar
2 metric (10mL) teaspoons butter / margarine, melted
1 metric tablespoon milk
1 metric teaspoon vanilla essence (can be substituted for any other flavour of essence, such as lemon, orange, raspberry or peppermint)
Food colouring if desired.

Method:

Mix all ingredients together to make a creamy mixture. Spoon or pipe onto the biscuits as desired, and chill before serving.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Or biscuits for UK and AUS people. I've made maybe 20 batches of those in the past few months - they are good! Recipe taken from here; metric conversion - from here.

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons (2 oz, 57 g) vegetable shortening
8 tablespoons (1 stick, 4 oz, 113 g) unsalted butter, soft but not melted
1 cup (220 g) packed* brown sugar
1/2 cup (100 g) white sugar
1 egg + 1 egg white
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (AUS and UK: vanilla essence)
2 cups + 2 tablespoons (270 g) flour
1/4 teaspoon (1.25 g) baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 cups (12 oz, 340 g) chocolate chips

* Packed brown sugar is not a type of brown sugar (I don't remember who asked). 'Packed' means you don't just pour it into the cup but tightly press it in, in order to fit as much as you can.

Directions:

Cream shortening and butter together - preferably by hand with a fork. You shouldn't have a problem if the butter is soft enough.
Add brown sugar and white sugar and mix.
Add the egg, egg white and vanilla and mix.
Add flour, baking powder and salt [recipe says to sift flour, baking powder and salt together beforehand but half the time I omit that step].
Fold in chocolate chips.

* At this stage, you can make rolls of dough, cover with plastic wrap and freeze.

Take spoonfuls of dough, or cut circles from the frozen dough, and place on aluminum foil or parchment paper.
Leave some space between them because they expand a little.
This, and most other recipes I've seen, says to bake at 375 F (190 C) for 12 min or until tops are lightly brown. For my oven, tops get brown for 6 min at 350 F (175 C), so be sure to watch them. As with all cookies, rotate them halfway through baking.
Cool on a wire rack.

They remain soft on the outside for about a minute after you take them out of the oven, but do not get fooled into overcooking them! While trying to find the perfect temperature, I overbaked my first two batches and the cookies were crunchy throughout. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I like mine soft and chewy on the inside.

Peanut Butter Biscuits

This is my mother-in-laws recipe and the kids, Jason and I absolutely love them. Be warned they are very more-ish.

Serves: 20-30 but this depends on the size of the balls you make.
Prep time: 10-20 mins
Cooking time: 15-20 mins

Ingredients –
125grams butter
¾ cups sugar
2 tablespoons peanut butter
¼ cup milk
1 ¾ cups plain flour
2 pinches of bicarbonate soda/baking powder

Directions –
Preheat over to 180c/356f. Cream butter and sugar. Add peanut butter. Stir in milk and flour. Roll in small balls and press down firmly with a fork dipped in flour. Bake for around 15-20 mins or until brown.

Jason took the photo because he is the one who always makes them for us.The cooked biscuits are on the left and uncooked on the right. Space them further apart then what Jason has in this picture because the batch he did here actually grew into each other lol.