Neopolitan Melting Moments

The other day, my usually unromantic boyfriend of many, many years came home from work with a bunch of my favourite flowers. My first question to him was, "Did you do something bad?". Which is quite sad now that I think about it. But it's been a while since I've gotten flowers. He's not one for romantic gestures, he hates Valentine's days and is only sort of enthusiastic about anniversaries. But he hadn't done anything wrong, just saw the flowers on his way to the bank on his lunch break. And I was happy to have something to put in my favourite new vases, these laboratory flower vases that I got along with my awesome teacupcake moulds from Urban Outfitters ♥

What can I say, the geek in me couldn't resist them. Anyway, the surprise of getting flowers (something that I hadn't had in a while), made me feel like baking something I haven't had in a while. Before I started this blog, my baking was limited to a very short list of basic recipes. For each of them, I would make them over and over with lots of different recipes until I found one that I was happy with. Vanilla cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies, sticky date pudding, vanilla bean pannacotta and melting moments. I was OBSESSED with melting moments. They are so evil but so good. A thick sploge of icing sandwiched between two melt in your mouth, buttery shortbread biscuits. Here in Australia I think they're also known as yoyo biscuits, but I've always known them as melting moments. What do you call them? They charge a ridiculous amount for them at cafes but they are so satisying with a cup of tea or coffee. And even better when they are homemade.

So here's a fun version that's even tastier than the plain vanilla version. I am a sucker for neopolitan ice cream. If you've ever bought neopolitan ice cream, you probably end up favouring one of the three flavours more than the others, whether it's the strawberry, chocolate or vanilla bit. For me it was always the strawberry. But in the end you always end up eating all of it because ice cream is ice cream. So this time I decided to try making neopolitan melting moments, rather than going and buying myself a giant tub of ice cream. I basically split one portion of the shortbread dough into three and made one vanilla flavoured, another chocolate flavoured and the third strawberry flavoured. And did the same thing with the icing, then sandwiched them together so that each biscuit had chocolate, strawberry and vanilla flavouring, in three different variations. Look!

Fun, right? And very very tasty. The combination of all three of the flavours in each biscuit is great, and interestingly each variation tasted a little different. It was quite interesting and the biscuits were pretty darn addictive. And so colourful! They are pretty rich, so I wouldn't recommend having more than three of these in one sitting. It always used to surprised me how difficult it was for me to find a recipe for melting moments that I was happy with. So many recipes out there give you dry, raw tasting, crumbling biscuits that make you feel like you've just filled your mouth with sawdust. But this one is really good. The biscuits aren't dry or too floury, just as long as you don't overwork the dough or cook the biscuits long enough. Oh and use good quality butter, it really makes your biscuits that much better.

Neopolitan Melting Moments
(adapted from this Gourmet Traveller recipe, makes 24 biscuits)
For the biscuits:
250g soft unsalted butter
80g icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp strawberry extract + pink food colouring
1 tbsp cocoa powder, sifted
75g cornflour, sifted
225g plain flour, sifted

For the icing:
275g icing sugar, sifted
100g cold unsalted butter, finely chopped
2 tbsp melted dark chocolate
2 tbsp strawberry puree or strawberry jam
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C and line 3 baking trays with baking paper. Using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Split flours into three equal portions, one for each flavour of biscuit (75g flour, 25g cornflour) add a pinch of salt of each. Split creamed butter mixture into three equal portions as well.

For the chocolate biscuits, replace 1 tbsp of flours with 1 tbsp cocoa powder. Beat 1/2 tsp vanilla essence into one of the butter portions. Fold in the flour and cocoa mixture with a wooden spoon until the mixture just comes together to form a soft dough. For the strawberry biscuits, beat strawberry essence into creamed butter. Fold flour mixture in with a wooden spoon until the mixture just comes together to form a soft dough. For the vanilla biscuits, beat 1/2 tsp vanilla essence into creamed butter. Fold flour mixture in with a wooden spoon until the mixture just comes together to form a soft dough.

Trying to handle the dough as little as possible, form level 1/2 tablespoons of mixture into balls, then place 5cm apart on baking paper-lined oven trays, flatten slightly to 3.5cm rounds, then, using a floured fork, press tines gently into dough rounds, to create grooves. Bake for 12 minutes or until lightly coloured. Stand biscuits on trays for 5 minutes, before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

For the three different icings, beat sugar and butter until light and fluffy, and split into three equal portions. Beat melted chocolate into one portion, vanilla extract into another portion and strawberry puree/jam into the third.

Sandwich biscuits together with 2 tsp of icing, so that each biscuit has chocolate, strawberry and vanilla flavours; 1 chocolate + 1 strawberry biscuit with vanilla icing, strawberry and vanilla biscuits with chocolate icing and chocolate and vanilla biscuits with strawberry icing.