Recipe : Melting Moments

I have a tendency to lose good recipes. These are pieces of papers I cut from newspapers or some yellow, stained with grease papers I used to jot down recipes given by friends etc. It is frustrating not being able to find my treasured melting moments recipe.

Melting moments is that buttery heaven that melts in your mouth after you crunch on the crispiness. Don’t mistaken it with those cheap, floury, tasteless kueh semperit that is often sold at night markets. This melting moments taste nicer than most butter cookies you can find.

The only tricky part about making melting moments is the cookie press. The dough is very soft as it consists of a lot of butter and to get the perfect cookie shape is a hair-pulling situation. So, I usually don’t bother with the looks of the cookie. As long as they taste great. The above is a cookie press. I just stuff the dough inside and press them piece by piece. Real fast once you get the hang of it.

The not so pretty but tasty cookies hot from the oven. Usually, traders who sell these are stingy with the butter and therefore, their cookies look pretty because the dough will not flatten as there isn’t much butter inside. BTW, butter prices have increased tremendously.

This is the recipe I modified after scouring books and internet sites. I can claim them as mine because I keep adding more and more ingredients inside to get the right consistency.

RECIPE FOR MELTING MOMENTS

Plain flour – 8 ozs

Custard powder – 2 oz (custard powder provide the yellow tinge)

Corn flour – 4 ozs

Icing sugar – 6 oz

Butter – 250 gm (one block) (about 9 oz)

Egg yolks – 2

Vanilla essence – 2 tsp

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Add all the flour and icing sugar into a big bowl and mix well. Cut butter into cubes (preferably butter still cold and hard) and rub into the flour. This is call the ‘rubbing-in’ method in making cookies. When the thing resemble bread crumbs, add two egg yolk and vanilla essence. You should get a firm dough. If they crumbles, add a few drops of milk. If the dough is too soft, add some corn flour.

You can either pipe out the cookie with a cookie press, make a flat sheet and use cookie cutter to cut into shape or just roll into marble size balls. If you like you can roll them in cornflakes. Add some cherry to decorate if preferred.

Bake in 180 – 200 deg. C oven for 15 mins. Most recipes I found suggested 175 deg. C but I hike up the temp. to 200 deg. to hasten the baking. In fact, I got a crispier cookie that way. So, baking is more on the ‘feel’ of the person. Adjust according to the situation. On a hot day, keep those remaining dough in the fridge so that they don’t melt into unmanageable dough.