Melting moments are a classic Australian biscuit. They are buttery and crumbly shortbread style biscuits sandwiched with a buttercream frosting. These salted caramel melting moments are a twist on the classic recipe with a salted caramel buttercream filling in the middle. Enjoy this melt in the mouth biscuit as a snack with your tea.
What are melting moments?
Melting moments are a classic Australian biscuit, similar to shortbread. They are a sandwich style biscuit with two circular shaped biscuits sandwiched with a buttercream filling. The classic filling for a melting moment is a lemon buttercream, but other fillings can be used. Such as the salted caramel buttercream filling that I have done to give these classic melting moments a caramel twist to them. This buttery melt in the mouth biscuit is super simple to make, and is perfect for tea.
How to make salted caramel melting moments?
Making melting moments requires two major steps - the first is making the shortbread biscuits, and the second is to prepare the filling, a salted caramel buttercream in this particular recipe. Once both items are ready, just sandwich them together and enjoy.
- Prepare the shortbread: Making melting moments requires just 5 ingredients - butter, icing sugar, flour, vanilla essence and cornflour (or cornstarch). Some recipes also call for using custard powder, but I prefer using cornflour as it’s more of a pantry staple. Start off with creaming the softened butter and sugar together, and then sift over flour and cornflour. Mix it together, and then create little balls of biscuit dough. Use a fork to make the traditional melting moments design, and then bake till golden.
- Prepare the salted caramel buttercream frosting: Cream butter till it’s light and fluffy, then add the powdered icing sugar as well as the salted caramel sauce. Add vanilla essence, and a pinch of salt. Mix it altogether, and the salted caramel buttercream is ready.
- Sandwich the melting moments together: Once the melting moments have been cooled down, they can be filled with the salted caramel buttercream. Use a butter knife or a small palette knife to spread some frosting in the middle of the melting biscuit. Top with another biscuit, and press down till the frosting reaches the edge. Repeat the process till all biscuits are made. Serve with tea or coffee.
Tips for making the best melting moments:
- Make sure the butter is at room temperature. It should be soft enough to press into, but not melted. It’s best to take the butter out 30 - 45 minutes before you start making the recipe (depending on how hot it is). It is possible to microwave the butter if you are in a hurry, but do it in 10 second spurts making sure the butter doesn’t melt.
- Use flour to prevent the biscuits from sticking. Dust your hands with a bit of flour when shaping the melting moment biscuits, and also dip the fork in flour when creating the design on top of the melting moments.
- Make the melting moments the right size. Melting moments are considered a dainty tea biscuit, so they are on the small side. Use a small cookie scoop or tablespoon to shape the biscuits. Try to make all the biscuits roughly the same size so when they are sandwiched together, they look symmetrical.
- Sift the ingredients: It’s important to sift the flour, cornflour and icing sugar / powdered sugar into the butter mixture as that will ensure the biscuits are light, and no clumps are formed as well.
What do I do if I don’t have salted caramel sauce?
I understand that not everyone is like me. Salted caramel is one of my favourite flavours, and I almost always have a jar of home-made salted caramel (recipe here) in the fridge since I use it so often.
If you don’t want to make homemade salted caramel, you can get a jar from the supermarket or you can use any other caramel sauce. Dulce de leche or condensed milk caramel is a good option, otherwise there should be other caramel spreads or caramel sauces available at your local supermarket. It may be necessary to adjust the icing sugar quantity as some spreads can be thicker.
In case you don’t like caramel at all, skip the caramel sauce and flavour the buttercream with lemon zest and lemon juice for a lemon buttercream, or orange zest and orange juice for an orange buttercream.
If you are looking for other recipes perfect for tea time, do try out the following:
- Almond Cake
- Banana Bread
- Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
- Lemon Blueberry Muffins
- One bowl chocolate cake
Would love it if you could try out and rate the recipe, and let me know how it was in the comments below!
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📖 Recipe
Salted Caramel Melting Moments | Classic Melting Moments with a Caramel Twist
Ingredients
Biscuit Dough:
- 1 cup / 250g butter, softened
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
- ½ cup / 80g icing sugar (powdered sugar). plus more for garnish (see note 1)
- 1 ½ cup / 225g plain flour
- ½ cup / 75g cornflour / cornstarch
Salted Caramel Buttercream Frosting:
- ⅓ cup /80g butter
- 1 cup /110g icing sugar / powdered sugar
- ¼ cup salted caramel sauce
- ⅛ teaspoon vanilla essence
- ⅛ teaspoon salt flakes
Instructions
For the biscuit dough:
- Preheat oven to 160 C / 320 F (140 C fan forced).
- Place softened butter and vanilla essence in a large bowl. Sift icing sugar on top, and beat with an electric mixer until pale and creamy.
- Sift the flour and cornflour over the butter mixture, and stir through with a wooden spoon till a soft dough is formed.
- Flour a teaspoon and your hands, and then roll heaped teaspoonfuls of the mixture into balls and place on baking trays lined with butter paper. It is also possible to use a cookie dough scoop for this step.
- Place the balls 3cm apart on the lined trays. Dust a fork in flour (or icing sugar) and use the tines of the fork to gently flatten the melting moments. This creates the signature melting moments design.
- Bake in the preheated oven for about 14 - 18 minutes, swapping the trays halfway through, until the biscuits are pale golden and cooked through. Remove from the oven, and let them cool on a wire rack.
For the salted caramel buttercream frosting:
- Use an electric mixer to beat the butter in a small bowl until pale and creamy.
- Add icing sugar along with the salted caramel sauce. Beat on low speed until combined and smooth.
- In case the frosting is too soft, add more icing sugar or keep it in the fridge for a couple of minutes to stiffen up.
- Use a butter knife to spread a little buttercream on the base of a cooled biscuit, and sandwich it together with another biscuit. Repeat till all biscuits are made. This recipe will make about 18 - 20 biscuits. Nutrition has been calculated based on a serving size of 2 biscuits.
- The melting moments can be kept in an airtight container in a cool place for 4 - 5 days.
Notes
In case you don’t have any, it is possible to make your own - just pulse 1 cup of granulated white sugar in a spice grinder with 1 tablespoon of cornflour / cornstarch till a fine powder is formed.
There are types of icing sugar available in Australia - pure icing sugar which is just icing sugar pulverized into powder, and icing sugar mixture which is sugar pulverized into powder, mixed in with cornflour / cornflour.
Nutrition
TALESIA M WILLIAMS says
although I'm rather baked out at the moment (lots of holiday baking) I do want to try these. I think I will use a peanut butter, butter cream frosting instead.