Day 159. Melting Moments.

One of my first memories of baking at home is making Melting Moments with my Mum. The recipe was in the Be-Ro Flour Cookbook, a tiny paperback book about the size of a Chinese takeaway menu, filled with tasty treats; although to be honest I can only recall making these and dumplings.

You can still buy the cookbook - the 41st edition - for £2.50.

Here's the recipe to make 25-30 of these morish, coconut covered biscuits. Easy to make and a good starting point for budding young bakers.


Ingredients

• 5 ounces soft butter or 5 ounces soft margarine
• 3 ounces caster sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla essence or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 ounces self raising flour
• desiccated coconut or oats
• glace cherries

Directions

1. Heat oven to 180ºC, 350ºF, Gas Mark 4. Grease two baking trays.
2. Cream the butter or margarine with the sugar until very light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla essence or extract.
3. Stir in the flour and mix well.
4. Roll walnut sized pieces of the mixture into balls and toss in rolled oats or desiccated coconut.
5. Cut each glace cherry into quarters, for quarter for each melting moment.
6. Place on baking trays, flatten slightly and place a small piece of cherry on each biscuit. Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden brown but NOT dark brown.

N.B. To help shape "ball" type biscuits, slightly dampen the hands.