As is usual for me, my baking recently has been thematic. This time I’m reliving my teenage years and getting back to all those piped biccies I used to make.
Today, it’s melting moments. These little sandwich cookies melt in the mouth and for good reason: they are made exclusively with butter and powders. Powders? I mean flour, icing sugar and cornflour. When I post about Viennese Shortbread shortly, you’ll see the difference.
These melting moments are a bit edgy, they get a warm, spicy flavour from tonka bean and are sandwiched together with blood orange buttercream. Why blood orange? Well this citrus has an extra almost caramel like depth of flavour which lends itself to baking. Together, tonka bean and blood orange is a truly heavenly combo.
Tonka bean is delicious, and is described as a little like vanilla, a little like almond, a little like clove, and I think it has a distinctly cacao note to it. However it’s actually toxic if consumed in any great quantity, or if eaten raw. So if you are like me and have a fondness for raw biscuit mixture, REMEMBER don’t eat this mixture! Of course you can omit the tonka bean from the recipe and use just vanilla. Likewise if you can’t find blood oranges, just use regular orange zest.
One note about piping shortbread, the mixture needs to be very pliable (a little warmer than room temperature) or it will be very hard to squeeze through the nozzle. If you’ve never made this type of biscuit before I recommend using a wide star nozzle as this will make piping much more forgiving. I used a very narrow star nozzle.
Tonka Bean and Blood Orange Melting Moments
Tonka Bean and Vanilla Shortbread
ingredients
250g unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup cornflour
1/3 cup icing sugar
1/4 tsp ground vanilla bean
1/2 tonka bean, grated
1/2 tsp salt
mixing
Combine all ingredients and mix on low speed until combined. Increase mixing speed, beat until creamy. Load the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle. Pipe rosettes, stars, or long fingers onto trays lined with bake paper. Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for about 10-13 minutes, depending on size, until the bases are golden. Cool on the trays, then sandwich together with the blood orange buttercream.
Blood orange buttercream
60g unsalted butter, softened
60g icing sugar
1 tsp grated blood orange rind
Beat all ingredients together until creamy. Load into a small ziplock bag, snip one corner and pipe onto the undersides of every second biscuit.
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