I’m on a massive countdown until the 20th August!  Series 4 of the Great British Bake Off will be starting and for once I won’t miss the first episode due to being away on holiday.  Last year the first episode came on when I was on holiday in Ibiza so I was thankful for Iplayer, Facebook and Twitter keeping me up to date.  This year we have already been away and and I can’t wait for it to start!

The other day I found the book which went with Series 2 where Jo Wheatley was the winner-  (“How To Bake The Perfect Victoria Sponge And Other Baking Secrets”) and had a look through the recipes.  There were several recipes I hadn’t got round to trying out especially the delicious Melting Moments.  I know it sounds silly but I can’t remember who baked them, was it MaryAnn or Janet?  Either way, they looked absolutely mouthwatering and I wanted to try baking them.  To me though, Melting Moments have oats in them, are circular with a cherry in the middle.  These looked more like Viennese Whirls.

So, as my mum was due to stay for a few days I baked some Melting Moments for her visit.

First butter and icing sugar were beaten with an electric mixer until the mixture was light and fluffy.  Vanilla extract then got added in. I then added plain flour and cornflour to the mixture.  This was mixed until it became smooth.  To make the actual biscuits you pipe the mixture onto greased baking trays. I used a large disposable “Get A Grip” Piping bag from Lakeland with one of their large star shaped nozzles.  The recipe says you get 16 pairs of cookies but I think I piped them far too big!  We only got 9 here!  To get the delicate pink swirl in the biscuit I had to pipe some red food colouring gel inside the piping bag!  This didn’t go to plan, I found my red gel tube was nearly empty and the pink one wasn’t much better!  In the end it was a mixture of the two colours and the colours came out as massive splodges, not a neat line!

The cookies baked in the oven for about 12 minutes. While they were baking I made up some buttercream filling and found some raspberry jam in the cupboard.  Once the biscuits had baked and cooled I assembled them as best as I could as they had all turned out different sizes!

My Mum was due to arrive in the early afternoon but by the time she arrived there were only 2 biscuits left!  The kids and their friends had eaten them as they saw them when they were out on the kitchen counter. I also pigged one as I was starving hungry!  Luckily my Mum got to try one the following day before the remaining two disappeared.

Happy Baking!

Love Sam xx