Melting moments and ricciarelli: flour and butter v almonds and eggs

If we put macaroons on one side for a minute – I know it’s hard – my other favourite bickies are melting moments and ricciarelli.

Melting moments are apparently an Australian invention based on Scotch shortbread, they were first mentioned in an Australian cookbook from 1928. 

 

 They contain the same ingredients as traditional shortbread (flour, cornflour, sugar, butter) but whereas shortbread is baked in slabs or ‘cakes’ and stamped with a pattern, melting moments are small bite sized drops.

At some stage after the 1950s they began to be sandwiched together with jam or icing.

I like using a vanilla flavoured biscuit with a sharp lemony icing/filling. The icing is butter, icing sugar and lemon juice. It needs to be spreadable but stiff, so that it dries hard and sticks the bickies together. 

My recipe is from a book called '100 Cookies' but you can google recipes, they are all pretty similar. 

Ricciarelli (pronounced ‘richie-a-RELli’) are a type of macaroon I guess. They are Italian biscuits made of ground almonds, sugar and egg white and they are moist and chewy rather than crisp’n’crunchy. They can be flavoured with lemon rind which works really well. 

 

I just googled the name and I found out they are named after an Italian prince, Ricciardetto della Gherardesca from Volterra, who apparently invented them when he came back from the Crusades in the 14^th century. 

I am now imagining a knight in full armour clanking around a massive castle kitchen trying to grind almonds really finely while Baldrick beats the egg whites. 

Anyway, here in the 21^st century there is a great recipe for them in Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess cookbook, thanks Nigella. You get a very sticky mass that you need to hand-shape into diamonds (using icing sugar to stop them sticking to your hands) and place on a baking tray to harden up before baking. 

You are supposed to leave them overnight but I always get impatient and try to bake them same day. 

Here is Jade helping out in the process by trying to speed up the drying with a hairdryer.

Unfortunately it didn’t really work and while you still end up with yummy biscuits, they look swollen and malformed, not the little neat diamonds that you want. So, always best to follow the recipe – sigh.